An absolutely beautiful game set in my favorite era of the Star Wars universe. Cal continues to be a compelling main character in a story that is absolutely worth experiencing. The gameplay is solid and I really enjoyed the new saber stances. The difficulty feels pretty spot-on, with some decent challenges near the tail end of the game (though I wish the first half of the game wasn't so easy). The side content feels pretty meh (uninteresting "open world", samey collectible cosmetics, boring minigames), but the main story is meaty enough that you can safely ignore them. Really looking forward to the next entry in this series.

My favorite game of the Arkham trilogy. Combat and predator sequences remain just as fun as in previous games, and even sport some minor improvements. The addition of the Batmobile was a welcome one, and in general it feels great to use. There is something magical about remote-piloting the Batmobile to sneak up on an unsuspecting gun emplacement or group of enemies blocking your path.

The biggest standout in this iteration is the story. I considered the story in the previous games adequate - it kept things moving, introduced fun characters and set up the action sequences. However, the story in this game is significantly more interesting - it gripped me from beginning to end and really delivered on its emotion moments. The twists were satisfying and exciting, and the storytelling and writing are top-notch. I felt like the ending didn't deliver as full a resolution as I had hoped, but it was still worth the ride.

Overall a great capstone for the series, very much worth playing.

While my first impulse is to just say this is "more Arkham Aslyum", it really has improved and polished the formula from the first game. Combat and predator encounters are still a joy (with a few improvements), but the more open environment really showcases the various traversal abilities. Zipping and soaring around Arkham City feels so cool, and doing it well requires a surprising amount of technique. Taken together, it means pretty much everything you are doing is fun, with no obvious "chores".

The main weakness I found with the game was that it just had too much stuff: too many combo moves, too many gadgets, too many riddler puzzles everywhere you look, too many playable characters. There were so many gadgets that on multiple occasions I got stuck in some traversal section because I just didn't remember all the gadget capabilities I had at my disposal. Having put maybe 25 hours into it I'm still not fully comfortable using each of the combo moves (and remembering their inputs). I eventually learned to just tune out the Riddler puzzles, instead of trying to figure out whether I just wasn't getting it or wasn't equipped to complete it (this was much more fun to go back to after the main story, and I did collect maybe a third of them). Once you really get into the game you can start appreciating these things, but I found it frustrating most of the time.

I came into this game with nearly zero FFVII nostalgia. I played the original far after release and thought it was a solid JRPG but didn't see what all the fuss was about. This game, however, hooked me early and held me all 40 hours it took to get through the main game and intermission.

There is a lot to praise here, but for me the combination of excellent voice acting, music, and visuals really took the cake. The combat is complex and interesting, and the Midgar was such a fun and interesting place to learn about and explore. I came away from the experience feeling far more connected to the cast of characters than ever before. The story feels like typical anime fare, but to me it felt like more of an excuse to get to know the characters and the world than a draw in its own right.

Overall, I loved this way more than I expected to. Looking forward to digging into the subsequent entries and very glad I decided to check it out!

A surprisingly good VR experience. It took a few holes to get used to the fact that you are swinging a "weightless" club, but past that everything feels quite intuitive and natural. The environments in the game are simple but beautiful and enjoyable to spend time in. Multiplayer with friends is effortless and the in-game avatars are just enough to give a sense of presence without getting in the way. The courses themselves are numerous and varied, though many of them are paid DLC (given the $15 base price, I'd say it's worth picking up at least a few). Overall this is a shining example of VR-mimicking-reality in which the VR version is better - I can play on a private course with my friends anywhere, any time, for a fraction of the cost. Give it a try!

A decent continuation from the first episode. The combat remains entertaining and strategically interesting, and I really enjoyed some of the new abilities and "twists" present in some encounters. It continues to be interesting to learn more about the world and each step forward continues to feel full of danger. The story was fine - it feels a bit less grounded than the first episode (leaning harder into fantasy with the Valka/Menders), but mostly suffers from being a "middle episode". Progress is made and there is somewhat of a climax at the end, but it ends up feeling more like a cliffhanger than anything being meaningfully resolved.

A great puzzle game that really hooked me at the start. Puzzle difficulty ramps up nicely and they do a good job of adding in interesting new twists as you go. The controls generally work well, so executing your solution after coming up with a plan isn't too challenging, but occasionally you need decent shooting skill or precise timing. I also found it fun to go back and optimize solutions to puzzles, as there is often multiple ways to divide labor between your clones. Overall a good idea well executed.

I really enjoyed many of the elements of this game, and coming back to it now really highlights how much of it has been absorbed into games that came after it. Once I got over how "sluggish" the combat can feel at first, I grew to really enjoy how it emphasizes deliberate movement and timing. The level design also lives up the hype, with a world that feels vast, mysterious and dangerous. The shortcuts throughout the world are particularly brilliant, serving as both a reward to be sought after, and an elegant replacement for any kind of fast-travel system.

Ultimately what pushed me away were the dated graphics, the lack of a real narrative to draw me along, and the fact that I am playing on Switch without an online subscription, so I don't get any player messages. This meant I ended up spending too much time wandering around looking for the specific door to the random key I just found, or trying to find the barely-visible path to the next area I need to traverse. Hopefully the more recent Souls games will be better in this respect

Entertaining if you enjoy South Park. The writing and story are as entertaining as the show, and the game does a good job showing off various characters and settings from the universe. I enjoyed the fantasy tone and the music was pretty excellent. However, the gameplay is at best mediocre and frequently frustrating. The controls are the worst offender - I found them very unintuitive and kept messing up inputs or needing to look up the proper approach. This is compounded by the fact that many moves have different controls and behavior in different contexts (farts in particular). At the end of the day it was worth putting up with to progress the story, but the gameplay not worth playing for on its own.