I played the first one for a few hours when it first came out. I thought seemed fun and something right up my alley but also felt it was a bit overwhelming. For whatever reason I just never picked it up and finished it. Recently I've been having a perpetual itch for platinum trophies again and apparently 2 is a much easier and obtainable plat than the first so I decided to play it. And in this era the sequel usually improves on mechanics and gameplay and adds just a bit of polish so I'm guessing I haven't missed much with the first.

And yeah this franchise is right up my alley. It's the best Venom/Carnage game that we're never going to get. I love that it's like this Resident Evil type world with these giant grotesque gooey zombie monsters while you play as symbiote type anti-hero character straight out of a Spider-Man story. This game largely plays like a ps3 era open world Spidey game. It's like Web of Shadows if you got to play as Venom or Carnage the whole time. So that's awesome and right up my alley and I would have loved the emo edgy protagonist from the first back in 09-12. Now it's kinda corny and laughable.

So I really like the concept here. And the gameplay for the main character is mostly really well done. All of your playable character's mechanics play really well and feel fleshed out. It feels like the bulk of the work and a lot of care was dedicated to figuring this out. I like his diverse arsenal of goo and blade powers. I like the locomotion in this game. It felt very intuitive and was fun to explore and wasn't a chore getting from point A to point B. He plays well, but where the game falls short is in the overall game design, enemy AI, and script and story. I wanted to rate this game higher because it was a fun enough play through and the type of game and world that really appeals to my tastes, but it just wasn't quite good enough to warrant a higher rating.

This is a 3rd person open world superhero game. You fight a variety of different zombie like monsters and other super powered soldiers and the occasional tank or helicopter. It's fun enough to bash your way thru them and you have a lot of options on how to do so at your disposal. But where the game fails is that it never really feels like you ever have to switch it up. You don't have to change your style or approach for any of the enemies. You can just basically pick your favorite weapon and button mash your way thru the entire game. It's sort of a let down as it's never a challenge and becomes quite repetitive quite quickly. The enemies are diverse in appearance only. They give the illusion of variety, but really their play style is also to just basically do their version of button mash at you. Since their AI isn't great and doesn't force you to change your approach, it allows to do just mash away at them.

Thru 2 playthroughs, one on easy and one on hard, I think I only died once and failed a mission 2 other times (which were only failed because I didnt pay attention to the mission directions, not because it was actually challenging) until the final boss fight on hard which I died another 3 times. The final boss fight has 3 stages and then a final QTE to finish him off and beat the game. I died once during each of the initial 3 phases, so even that you figure out pretty quick. Easy difficulty is incredibly easy and once you've beaten that and acquired all your upgrades, hard difficulty feels just as easy. It's never a challenge.

Not only does the gameplay get repetitive by simply just button mashing, but the game design and mission objectives are incredibly repetitive too. Most of this game is just sneak into an area, stealth consume a person to acquire their identity, discover information, destroy a thing, rinse and repeat. Sometimes the order of those steps is switched but it's so much of just finding a person to consume them which gives you information on where to go to kill or destroy a thing. Boring. And the sneaking logic is pretty silly and laughable. It's got the GTA logic where if you're wanted you need a reskin to get the authorities off your tail and it'll work even if the cops see you pull into the car wash. It's not exactly like that, but there are plenty of moments akin to that in this game. Between that and the enemy AI I could see this making for a good Dunkey video.

And I largely played this game on mute while listening to podcasts but I'd tune into the cutscenes and dialog and story every once in a while. I think the voice actor for the main character Heller did a fine job and I'm sure the voice acting is solid for the most part, but the dialog and writing and overall story beats in the final confrontation was the nail in the coffin for this game only getting a 3 star review from me. It's very cliche and simple and empty and a bit too much "been there, done that." The story at large is basically protagonist wants to get revenge on someone who he blames for the deaths of his family. Antagonist wants to infect the whole world to give them super powers and be the next step in evolution. They fight. Good guy wins and gets his revenge. Nothing too deep or moving there. It's just basic. And the cinematic cgi cutscenes look pretty solid here, but the in game rendered ones largely don't. It's also a victim of its time where it's another one of those gross ugly brown/green ps3 games where the environment all looks so murky and bland.

Overall I'd say if you like open world superhero games from this era like Infamous or some of the Spider-Man games then you'll probably like this. I really liked the power set and the locomotion. I liked bashing my way thru enemies and feeling like a God until I suddenly didn't. Finding the collectibles was a bit of fun and not a pain in the ass at all. You don't even need a guide. I always liked the finishing animations. It was always fun to see Heller rip thru baddies in the most gnarly way. I want to say this game was good enough for 2012 but maybe it doesn't quite hold the test of time now, but the fact they never made a 3rd one tells me maybe it wasn't quite good enough for 2012 either. Anyways a decent game that I enjoyed getting the platinum for.

Sorry for the long review. I wanted to get back to my review style from my metacritic days where I'd write lengthy reviews and touch on each little aspect in detail. No one's reading this anyways lol

I cannot tell you how much I loved this world. It's like a weird surreal David Lynchian world full of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It's Panos Cosmatos meets Stephen King. It's esoteric. It's anachronistic. It's paranormal. It's sci-fi. It's so beautifully creepy and unique that I just absolutely loved the setting and atmosphere. The bland brutalistic government building paired with the highly stylized extradimensional threats mixes well to create this highly unsettling world. It's a bit The Void, it's a bit Stranger Things, and they even managed to cram in some Last of Us style fungus based zombies. Brilliant.

As far as gameplay goes this is so incredibly right up my alley. I love 3rd person shooter games with superpowers. Things like the Infamous franchise come to mind, as well as Dark Sector, and Deadpool. The latter of which I platinumed on Ps3 and Ps4 because I liked it so much. It's possibly my favorite type of gameplay for action adventure games. I love horror and I love superheroes. They are probably my 2 favorite genres right now. And Control was able to perfectly blend the 2 genres in a way that a big budget movie has failed to ever really do for me.

Poor navigation and some technical issues are what kept me from giving this game a perfect score. I'm glad I stuck with this game. I loved this world so much it really makes me want to play Alan Wake.

I finally finished this after dabbling with it on and off for nearly a year.

I really enjoyed this game. When it was first announced or I first saw a trailer I was annoyed that it looks so close to the movie versions without just being the movie versions. Same thing with the Avengers game I never played that everyone hates. But over the course of this game I really came to appreciate these versions of the characters. They retain all the core qualities of the characters while doing enough to differentiate themselves from the movie versions and warranting their existence. I also like the little references to other Marvel properties we haven't seen in the MCU yet like Dazzler and Darkhawk. These little things helped it feel like it was it's own proper expanded marvel universe and not just the movie one.

The gameplay, especially the combat, can feel a bit chaotic, but once you've figured it out it's a lot of fun. The AI is done really well and your teammates never feel like they drag you down or like you have to do a lot of hand holding. That's a hard thing to get down with one AI character for one small portion of a game let alone an entire 20 hour game with several characters.

You only play as Star Lord and you give orders to other guardians and i thought this would get stale only ever playing as the one character but it works really well. The story was a really good blend of a solid video game and solid comic book story while retaining that James Gunn emotional core like the movies. The cinematics are incredibly well done and the final confrontation with Nikki at the birthday party legitimately had me tearing up. The graphics and facial animations are movie quality.

The story has a bunch of fun references and cameos. I really liked the inclusion of Adam Warlock and Mantis. This is a very Guardians type story. The gameplay is fun throughout but could have maybe used a bit more puzzles with some actual challenge. Not just "hey drax move that stone there." The only bugs I found were sometimes the audio was delayed. Like a character would say "hey open that door" after I already opened it. Not necessarily a bug but an annoyance that affects immersion. I had one crash. Sometimes thered be some objects clipping through others. Little teeny tiny things that aren't complete gamebreakers or ones that entirely ruined my experience.

The collectibles look annoying to get as they didn't do a great job of tracking them for you or giving you an easy way to free roam to pick them up. At the start I wasn't looking forward to going back through this a 2nd time to get them all but by the end I've had such a fun time playing it and now I feel like I finally really understand the combat and level design that I'm really looking forward to getting the platinum trophy for this.

I love the guardians and this was a great way to spend some time with them in the lead up to volume 3 this May.

I've really enjoyed both of these South Park RPGs. I never think I like turn based strategy RPGs until I'm actually playing them and then I realize I'm addicted. I haven't played many, but I've loved all the ones I've tried. (Games like this and my old Pokémon games for Gameboy.) Playing this actually made me excited for Marvel's Midnight Suns. I'm a sucker for superheroes. Which brings me to my next point.

I think I liked this one just a bit more than Stick simply because of the superhero theme. They're fun breezy plays and a must for any South Park fan. Playing Stick of Truth a few years ago actually reinvigorated my interest in the show after not having watched it in years.

Fractured also adds a few mechanics and some interesting boss fights that I don't remember from last time. It's a few nice wrinkles, but it plays largely the same. My only complaints are that I never feel like I have to properly strategize for any fight and I can just bash my way thru them. That and I felt this one went on for just a tad bit too long. Platinum was less frustrating this time and overall I just had a blast with Fractured But Whole. I'd def play a 3rd one if they made it for next Gen consoles.

Well this is a pretty neat little indie game. It's way more difficult and frustrating than advertised, but I enjoyed getting the platinum for this one. It only took about 10ish hours. It's a little Among Us as you play as a spaceman going around your ship fixing things. However it's not the chaos and backstabbing and multi-player of Among Us. It's just a quiet little puzzle game that's a bit of fun. I enjoyed the levels and the puzzles and learning to get a hang of the controls. The physics are really well done here maybe a bit too good. But all in all a fun little quiet indie puzzle game set in space if that's your thing. Worth a quick play thru.

Ya know I used to think BF4 was my favorite, but I have to say I keep coming back to BF1. I'm going for the platinum currently but I've really never stopped playing the multi-player ever since it first came out in 2016. I pop in and out periodically over the years. I always have a blast. It's the battlefield I'm best at. I love everything about it and if the servers shut down on all battlefields, BF1 is the one I'd miss the most. And ever since V and 2042 came out they only retroactively make BF1 look better. BF1 is the last great Battlefield as of this writing. And now that I'm going for the platinum and replaying the campaign for the first time in approx 7 years, I have a newfound appreciation for it. Holy hell does it look gorgeous, especially for 2016, and it's just a great campaign. It puts other FPS war games' (with focus on multi-player) campaigns to shame. COD WW2 is a recent example. BF1 is just a great multi-player experience that's fun as hell, gorgeous cinematic, and a well thought out robust campaign. I love this game. One of my all time favorites.

This is one of the worst games I've ever played. I only played it for the easy platinum. I've never even seen any of the Cars movies. They're literally the only Pixar movies I haven't seen. I hate the Cars world. It's so weird and confusing and off putting. Ugh yuck.

Anyways as far as this game goes, like I said it sucks. It's one of the worst things I've ever played. It's so shallow and basic. You just complete races or drive to the yellow circle to complete a really mundane side quest or bonus objective. You play as 3 different Cars depending on the race. Everything with Lightning McQueen is really easy. Everything with the other two is really frustrating especially the terrible Mario Kart knock off. The physics suck, the handling is terrible, and the invisible walls extremely annoying. I don't play much racing games, but I've played enough to know even for a genre I don't like that this is really bad and really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The whole thing is just so bad and embarrassing. They couldn't even get Owen Wilson to voice the 3 lines Lightning has in this game. Also why is this game? It came out split dab right in the middle of Cars 1 and Cars 2. It's the quality of a terrible movie video game tie in. Why not wait 2 years and flesh it out and release it along side Cars 2? This whole thing is baffling and makes no sense. O well. Thanks for the easy platinum. It's Platinum trophy number 100 for me. What a depressing one to get it on. Ugh.

This is like that terrible Generator Rex game I played a while back except a bit better. The platforming is terrible but the level design is decent. There's enough variation in both level and gameplay that it's fun enough for a quick playthrough, especially if you're a Star Wars fan. However the trophy list can be tedious and it gets quite tiresome by your third playthrough as you're trying to remember which levels you've completed as which characters because the game doesn't track it for you. Also co-op trophy is really annoying. All in all it's not that terrible, but it's not good either. It's bottom of the barrel of Star Wars video games, but it's better than other cartoon GoW clones from the era.

This is the first wrestling game I've played since I was a kid. The last one would have been on N64 or PS1. Needless to say, I'm not a wrestling fan. I was simply intrigued by this game because it's an easy platinum. Even though I'm not a wrestling fan now, there was a brief period when I was as a kid. This did give me a bit of nostalgia which was nice. However the gameplay is just so boring and repetitive and slow.

The control scheme was uninspired. None of the trigger buttons are used at all which leaves O, X, triangle, and square for everything. Some buttons end up being 3 completely separate commands or moves which is frustrating because your character will often times do the wrong one. The buttons could have been mapped better to make the gameplay more precise.

Also I don't know how other modern wrestling games play compared to this one, but it played so slow especially in comparison to other fighting games like Mortal Kombat. I felt like the AI was really dumb and slow and you often just waited for it to get into position so you could perform a certain move on it (which inevitably would end up initiating the wrong move because of the whack control scheme). Between that and legend killer mode basically just being 80 straight matches in a row, you end up just spamming square until you can pin your opponent which shockingly enough becomes really repetitive and boring.

Despite all that, the gameplay was a bit fun at first when you're just starting to figure things out. It's neat to see what moves and features from pro wrestling are incorporated and what animations will be triggered. Like actual WWE it doesn't fail to put on a show. But once you've seen it once you stop being impressed. The character models look nice and I think the graphics hold up well for a game from it's generation. But a lot of the moves are just reskins of each other which adds to the repetitive-ness. None of the characters I played as really felt all that different. You could do the exact same things with Andre the giant as you could with Brett Hart.

I was surprised by the amount of customization with this game. It felt ahead of it's time in that regard. I liked the inclusion of all the different match types and modes. I liked the inclusion of the actual video footage of old matches and wrestlemania's. It felt like a true love letter to pro wrestling and WWE, but it just fell short. The difference in match type and mode again felt like it was a moot point since the gameplay was all so repetitive and it became stale quick.

In short I liked some of this games features, I appreciated that it was a quick easy platinum, I enjoyed it for a touch of nostalgia, but overall it was a pretty weak game due to poor button mapping which resulted in shallow and repetitive gameplay.

I finished this a while back and must have forgot to leave a review. It's a solid kiddie platformer that's way better than it has any right to be or honestly needed to be. The ps2 era was full of solid IP platformers like this. Not only is it a solid game with good mechanics, easy traversal, plenty of variation, but it's a solid remake with fresh bright new colors, vibrant levels of course with upgraded graphics including better character models and backgrounds.

It sort of reminded me of the lego games before they were the lego games. You play as different characters who each have their own unique abilities and you have to switch between them to properly utilize their abilities to complete puzzles and advance through the levels. It's the same type of simple button smashing combat. It's easy and simple mindless fun.

The levels are varied enough and fun to explore for collectibles. I liked some of the mini games. It was fun getting thrown back into the world of bikini bottom. Something I haven't visited in over a decade. I felt like a 13 year old again. It's also an easy platinum with only 1 incredibly annoying part. All in all a solid game I got for free on ps plus that I really enjoyed.

This is difficulty done right. Never before have I played such a challenging game that never once felt frustrating. The frequent checkpoints and instant load time gave me plenty of patience to complete this game.

I've never played anything like this as it's sort of a mash up between Portal, Mirror's Edge, and Titanfall. It's definitely more of a puzzle platformer with action elements than a straight up FPS action adventure game. I didn't think this would be my thing at all but I loved the level design, puzzle/platform elements, and the mechanics. Everything worked so smoothly once you got a hang of it. The gameplay was fast and fresh. Even though you die a million times it's still incredibly fun. Like I said, it's really challenging but damn is it satisfying to finally figure out a particularly stubborn part.

I loved the world and it's aesthetics. The cyberpunk sci-fi neon techno robot ninja world just really works for me. I was just so pleasantly surprised by this game that I loved it.

I absolutely hated this game at first. It felt clunky as hell and overwhelming with its menus and mechanics. But boy am I glad I stuck around. Once I got the hang of it I couldn't put it down. Makes me think I should give Dishonored and Prey a second chance.

I just loved this game's design, aesthetic, and core concept gimmick. Every time there's a stuck in a time loop action movie everyone always says, "it's like a video game!" But this is the first video game I've ever played or heard of where you're actually stuck in a timeloop. Brilliant.

Once you figure out these controls and nail down your playstyle you'll have a blast with this game. Another great Playstation exclusive. Off to platinum it now.

Destroy All Humans is a game I always meant to get around when I was 15. Well now that I'm 32 better late than never.

This game is a lot of fun. It's pretty much what I expected with quite a bit of surprises. It seems pleasantly ahead of it's time for 2005. The semi open world sand box style levels, map collectibles, weapon upgrades, post story challenges, and a surprising amount of variety to gameplay all add up to an incredibly modern feeling game. That said I don't know what, if any, mechanics or gameplay was added for this remake.

I do know the graphics were completely overhauled and the entire design aesthetic was switched from the original. At first I thought this looked fine, but then I saw it compared to the original and it gave me a whole new appreciation for it. Not that I'm one to complain about old graphics or think they look like shit just because it's old. I still love playing ps2 games in their original form and I settle into the graphics just fine. I had a new appreciation for Destroy All Humans graphical re-design because the cartoony aesthetic works so much better for it. It fits the tone and the story so much more than the realistic look they were going for originally.

I also appreciated the satirical tone and the retro 50s B movie sci-fi look. It's a fun throwback and those two flavors mesh really well.

My biggest nit picks is that a lot of the levels just felt like tutorials and they never really let you off the leash. It felt like the game really shined in the open world free roam segments. It also felt like I was completely overwhelmed with text boxes and dialog. At any given time there could be 3 separate boxes of text with 3 separate voices talking at the same time. It felt like audio-visual over stimulation. The only gameplay element that really annoyed me was the camera when flying the saucer. I felt everything else was adequately implemented for 2005. The gunplay, traversal, telekinetic powers, stealth mechanics all felt really well done. The challenges at the end were slightly annoying but nothing that couldn't be done after a few tries. It's a fairly easy platinum trophy which is alway bonus points for me.

I'm sad there was so much missed time from my childhood by not playing this sooner but like I said better late than never. I really enjoyed Destroy All Humans. 8/10.

This game has no reason to be this good. For being a free game that's just basically an excuse to demo the new PS5 controller features, it didn't need to go this hard.

Astro's Playroom is a lot of fun. It's a delightful little platformer that's also a nice trip down memory lane. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. To celebrate Playstation, show off the new controller, and introduce you to the next generation. And it happens to be a pretty dang good platformer to boot. It's stylish, colorful, challenging but not difficult, and a blast to explore and discover all the video game references. It's also an easy and quick platinum trophy which always scores bonus points with me. Overall it's just a wonderful introduction to PS5.