IO Interactive have had a rough go of things on the business end of things, but HITMAN and HITMAN 2 are triumphs. All of the HITMAN levels can be imported and played in HITMAN 2 with all of the new features and tweaks, cutscenes and all. This is how I played it. Both games are masterfully created, the open sandbox/simulation environments offer so much variety and different ways to approach the targets, without being overwhelming. Every single level just drops you in and the story naturally unfolds before you as you explore and pull on the different threads.

The real fun comes from replaying the levels multiple times, exploring different stories/character interactions, and trying to complete various challenges like the Silent Assassin and Sniper Assassin achievements for each mission - what set out as an attempt to capture the magic of Blood Money resulted in 2 games as good or better than Blood Money.

One con worth noting is the disappointment that you can't go back and play all of the past elusive target missions which dropped from time to time. I get why they wanted them to be timed events to keep the community engaged as the different episodes became available, but now that all of the episodes have dropped and we are on the brink of episode 3, I would really like to have a shot at those missions

Doom Eternal is a wild ride. Fans of the franchise old and new probably have some expectation of what this game is, at least on the campaign front. This is the follow-up to Doom (2016), the franchise's soft reboot which takes the classic Doom and modernizes it. It was fast and frantic, but there was a simple elegance to it that spoke loudest when it was restrained.

Doom Eternal in many ways pushes the game forward, but at the expense of some key things that made Doom (2016 ) so great: a two steps forward one step back sort of thing. The story explores a lot more of the lore of the universe, with a variety of cutscenes, characters, and somewhat of a backstory for the Doom slayer. The story is alright, but it's effective enough to motivate you forward. This is one area where I might have enjoyed the "less-is-more" approach to story-telling of the previous game.

The simple elegance is gone and Doom Eternal is a literal assault on the senses. There are weapons, abilities, weapon mods, suit-perks, runes, skilltrees, cooldown-timers, secondary fire modes, enemy weak-points, and the list goes on. The game doles out these weapons and upgrades bit by bit so as not not overwhelm the player...though they might feel the weight of all these systems as more of a burden than as an asset, if only for a short while

I hesitate to speak ill of these mechanics though, because once the player gets the muscle memory in their finger-tips, a grasp of the cycle and flow of combat, builds an intuition of the cooldown timers, the enemy weak-points, and makes use of the new traversal mechanics...things all come together into something truly exhilerating that no other FPS game has even come close to achieving.

If Doom Eternal had one rule, it would be this: You can't play this game how you want. Doom (2016) gave the player a lot of freedom and there was a some leniency that let the player get away with things that the developers may not have wanted. Doom Eternal demands the player fall into a specific play pattern or you will die and not progress, and that's just how it is. The game forces you to use ALL of your weapons, All of your abilities, prioritize enemies, and makes you constantly move and weapon switch within a cycle of actions that sustain you.

The cycle works like this: glory kills (melee killing a staggered enemy) gives you health, chainsawing an enemy gives you ammo, and burning an enemy will cause them to drop armor. With the constant barrage of enemies and damage, you need to learn to be constantly aware of your health, armor, and ammo-levels so that you can make quick decisions about how best to cut through the enemies in each area. Creative Director Hugo Martin says it best when he refers to the game like a chess-match and a "combat puzzle". It's about figuring out what the right move to make at the right time is and then executing it. It's not a mindless shooter where you kill demons - but once you master the gameplay, your skills and decision making will feel like second nature and you will be able to tackle any challenge that the game throws at you.

It would be a disservice to critique this game and not mention the environments. The level design in this game is phenomenal, and the worlds you travel to are massive and breath-taking. The story and lore sometimes can feel a bit off, but that in no way detracts from how brilliant the vision for these environments and worlds are. Along with the design of the worlds, the enemy designs are also excellent with a great variety of different looking and differently behaving enemies that are each challenging in their own right. The design across the board is just incredible.

In conclusion, this game is astounding even with the clear and sometimes frustrating detractors. There is literally no experience in any other game like this and the "feel" of finishing the game having mastered the best that was thrown against you speaks for itself. If you're in for a wild ride and are willing to play the game how it demands to be played, then Doom Eternal will absolutely hold up its end of the bargain.

Dusk is a phenomenal game that harkens back to grandpa Quake but is faster, edgier, and doing its own thing, like any rebellious grandchild would do. The tone and atmosphere really nails the setting they are going for and the level design really opens up and surprises you the further you progress into the game.

It's broken up into 3 chapters, and it's taken me about 3 hoursish per chapter - each one having a different setting that grows and builds towards some really crazy battles and boss fights. Smaller atmospheric lulls between larger combat focused areas help vary the game and give you moments to appreciate the world and its design. You might think a low-poly old-school style game wouldn't be as interesting as a more modern game but there's a real charm and character to the look of the game.

One would be remiss to discuss this game and not mention THE GUNPLAY OH MY GOD THE GUNPLAY. There's a great arsenal of weapons at your disposal, each one punishing in its own way and good against a certain set of enemies that a different weapon might not be. Now, this isn't "rock/paper/scissors" matching the right weapon to the right enemy, but on the harder difficulties when ammo isn't as plentiful as you would like, there's a bit of a meta-game to tracking your ammo and saving certain weapons for certain types of encounters. There's a style and a flow to the combat, not unlike Doom, Hexen, Blood, Quake, where you're running and gunning, strafing groups of enemies and prioritizing targets, but this game definitely has its own rythem that suits its style, and there is a surprising level of verticality to this game that the others don't have.

Overall, I LOVE this game, and I'd say it's tied with God of War for my best game of 2018. I haven't even gotten around to checking out the endless modes or the multiplayer, but the single player is so good on it's own that it easily deserves a recommendation.

Donut County is a beatifully crafted game that tells a nice whimsical story that's fun and light-hearded with some thinly veiled social commentary. You basically control a hole in the ground that grows in size the more it eats. This is in the same vein as Katamari Demaci for those familiar with that franchise. The art is interesting and creative but where this game really shines is the slappin' soundtrack. The second half of the game has some more involved puzzles than the first half, though most puzzes are still very simple and only take a minute or two to figure out. A play through the entire game clocks in right around 2 hours, so don't expect a long adventure. At full price, that might be a bit steep for some when you only get 2 hours out of it. That being said, I enjoyed it and don't regret it one bit - grab it on a sale if you can.

Brink had so much potential - Brink had style, Brink had slick movement, Brink had a gorgeous art direction and ambient score, Brink had interesting characters and cool weapons, Brink had everything...so what happened?

Brink is tragic tale of a game that was supposed to be everything we wanted and more, yet completely failed as the sum of its parts. From the dreadful launch, the lack of content, the absence of a story, and the limited scope of delivery for each of the promises culminated in one of the biggest disappointments in gaming I have ever had to swallow. I didn't just lose $60 that day...a little piece of me died inside.