This is a great game, but after the level of its predecessors (not counting Origins) i'm a little conflicted on some choices. In terms of the actual gameplay, that being the stealth and combat, this is probably the best the series ever got. Many of the additions to combat such as the environmental takedowns and satisfyingly taking down charging enemies with a batarang were great touches, and even though there are a few annoying combo breaker enemies and fights it never reaches Origins levels. By that I mean it's never the aim of the combat to intentionally break your combos, more make them more difficult to earn but all the more satisfying when you do. This is a point for both combat and stealth, but the Fear takedowns are awesome. Perhaps the most welcome addition to a Batman game is that sudden ability to pick off up to five guys at once in rapid succession, a very entertaining ability that I fully utilised at every given opportunity. Stealth also has more enemies designed to mess with you, such as the drone pilots, those who can detect your stealth mode, medics who will revive anyone you pick off and "reflective armour" enemies who you can't see with stealth mode on It can be sometimes aggravating if you jump headfirst in but if you're taking your time to plan out your attack, it's satisfying to have these extra challenges to plan ahead for. It's all geared towards you thinking smart, being patient and planning as well as you can and it's very very satisfying to do a stealth section perfectly. While we're on gameplay it would be hard to talk about this one without mentioning the elephant in the room; The Batmobile. While I don't hate it as much as others i've seen, I understand why there is considerable distaste for it. We'll come onto it a little later but side missions based around fighting endless waves of tank drones and doing annoying races get tedious after a while, the former being a very large part of the side quests if you are looking to do them all. I didn't despise it but I would often take the opportunity to get there via conventional means, especially since the upgraded grapnel boost meant you could jet across the cities three islands with relative ease even without the need for a huge car. The story is a little weaker than before (again not counting Origins) but definitely has its high points, Scarecrow is genuinely quite menacing throughout and totally different to his memorable Asylum appearance. The Arkham Knight I must say they didn't handle in the best way, this kind of reveal is best with prior foreshadowing and to my knowledge this is the first time Jason Todd is ever mentioned in the series, and the way they approach it is so on the nose that his reveal becomes very obvious. I'm also not huge on the fact that the Joker is essentially the main villain once again, as despite your interactions with the Knight and Scarecrow, he's the final fight of the game and spends the whole thing as your main point of conflict. That said, any excuse to have Mark Hamill's interpretation of the Joker at his very best, tearing into Batman (and every other character)'s entire ethos throughout in memorable ways. Many of the side missions stick to the whole Militia takeover of Gotham and are centred around the Batmobile, but some of the ones that aren't are amazing. I'm particularly thinking of Pyg, who has maybe the best side quest in the entire series save for Zsasz. I think that probably says more about my interest in very sinister characters than anything else but it's a fantastic mission, truly creepy and with a great finish. Then again, there are also ones like Deathstroke which is a total disappointment after how great he is in Origins, and the Riddler who I once again neglected to complete. City was just so much of a hassle that it put me off trying this time round, despite the Riddler being a decent insecurely written character it didn't spur me on to finish things.
I think I rambled a bit too much like the review of Origins but point being, this is decidedly below City, and personally I think I prefer Asylum too, but this is a great game that reaches into fantastic area now and then. A good end to a legendary series.

I think this game has really ignited a passion for games in me once again. I was having fun with games like Doom and Quake again this year after thinking i'd never really get gaming like I did as a child or teenager, but I think this is the game that has dragged me right back into the medium. I think the general feel of the game is what dragged me in as the way it looks and plays really helps to bring Zebes to life atmospherically as a mysterious intriguing place to be discovered and explored from start to end. The learning curve was interesting as I wasn't too familiar with games like this or really many games before a certain time at all, but it was rewarding to play and learn and certainly rewarding to beat. It was exciting and fun to actually discover new items and abilities and rewarding to beat certain bosses that were a pain on a first few goes (mostly Phantoon because of those blue fire attacks). It was great to beat and I imagine after a while, it will be great to go back and 100% (which I think I want to do, not sure).

This one took me a while of off-again on-again playing to beat, not because it was bad but more due to my disinterest or non-committal to games generally when I'd first picked it up. I'm glad I beat it, it's not the best game i've ever played but it was a lot of fun. The final boss was total bullshit though it felt like a bit of a disappointing way to finish the game as a lot of what went on prior was fulfilling and creative only for the final boss to feel a lot more random chance and stressful. Other than that I enjoyed though, just perhaps wish I'd done it in closer sittings as maybe I lost out on some higher engagement in the full product.

It's a Doom game, it's hard to say I didn't enjoy it. However, of all the Dooms I have played now, this is comfortably the weakest one. It has its moments, but gets pretty weak and lazy feeling towards the end, things become "here's a lot of aggressive enemies" and I know shooters aren't renouned for incredible boss fights but the last one here was stupid, having not got the secrets because of course I didn't on a first playthrough, it is a bit of a war of attrition and i'm not the biggest fan of that. I reckon that boss would be more rewarding if I replayed to get the secrets and beat that way, but I won't do that because time is precious and I need to play more games than just Doom over and over (though if I had to, I would be ok with playing the first over and over).

Not awful but really it just doesn't have almost any of the enjoyment I used to get from Pokemon. Am I getting old? Well yes but everyone else is too and they all agree that the ones that we all grew up with were better than this. That's not a "back in my day" (mostly not anyway), it's just that the mechanics, the way it played, and yeah a little bit of the fact that we were all younger and stupider, it made it much better back then. Gen 5 for example is so much fun, it has a genuinely great story, a world that feels more real than most any other Pokemon region, and it was enticing from start to finish (to post-finish (to post-post-finish). This one lost me before even the first finish, where I realised that while the entire game was a breeze Leon was a random difficulty spike and that apparently meant I hadn't grinded enough raid battles and had to go back to the wild area to grind xp candies. Losing in the older games felt more like a challenge you'd failed that you had to rethink and retry, Crasher Wake was an absolute bastard and beating him was genuinely rewarding because it was an accomplishment to finally beat his Gyarados. Leon didn't feel rewarding to beat after losing and coming back, and none of the annoyingly-difficult-in-solo raid battles were rewarding or fun. They were a mindless slog, and to be honest a lot of the game is similarly mindless even if it is a little more fun. It's one of the first times I've got to the post-game of a pokemon game and after realising how it worked, just put the game down and stopped. That's not how I felt about the other half of Unova opening up or the extra island in Sinnoh either. Trying to look at the positives, I did really enjoy the Spikemuth gym, it felt like it relied on gimmicks that I wasn't interested in a lot less in favour of a fun battle against a group of ragtag sods in a pretty rough area (aka relatable to real life). In reality, maybe we have all grown up and the series hasn't grown with us, and in another 10 to 15 years people who loved this growing up will be talking about how crap Gen 12 is. Then again, I will be like 30 in 10 years so let's not think about that. Maybe I will come back for the post-game of this later, I didn't regret my time with this game, but i've got to say the series has really gotten away from me and it's a shame. Need to just replay Platinum really.

Writing this a few days after beating the story and then beating After Alterna after a fair amount of painful attempts, I loved the story mode of this game. More on the level of Octo Expansion which I felt was a more immersive story experience than the main game, this one combined elements of all prior stuff and gave us what I would say is the best single player work from the series, which of course is impressive for a game pretty much entirely marketed as a multiplayer game. As for the multiplayer, it's good too. Largely similar of course but with lots of returning maps, as well as new interesting specials. Some good stuff (Crab Tank), some annoying stuff (Reefslider please go away), i'm sure the whole process will be ironed out by professionals eventually but i'm having fun with it right now. Salmon Run is back to give me something to do when i'm doing particularly crap at battles, and it's as fun as before (your mileage may vary) with some interesting new bosses. Overall having a lot of fun with it right now, but time will tell if it holds up, or goes up or down in my estimation I guess.

In the realm of classics I really have not played that much, and coupling that with the fact that i'm slowly running out of internal hard-drive space and NES games are very very small files, I felt compelled to give this a shot. I definitely enjoyed myself, though i'm still not much of a platformer fellow (besides maybe being a bit of a fiend for Rayman Origins several years ago). I fully understand the huge influence and beloved nature of the game, considering a lot of what occurs here has been reused, reworked or referenced in other Mario or general platformer games ever since it was released, and I definitely appreciate it a lot but I feel that at least on my first playthrough it was great but didn't blow me away. That is perhaps because I don't platform very often, perhaps because I didn't grow up with it, and perhaps because I was just a little bit shit at it, but that's ok as I definitely enjoyed myself. Although I would like to say, Worlds 7 and 8 are a pain in the arse and kicked my teeth in multiple times, felt like a hell of a difficulty spike but perhaps I was just not very good and being quite lazy. Either way, I enjoyed it and I get why it's such a huge historic game.

I'm a big fan of classic shooters, retro shooters, boomer shooters or whatever you call them, so naturally I love the overall style of this game. I definitely agree with the overwhelming majority opinion that it wears its influences proudly on its sleeve but that is of course not a bad thing, the whole game plays like a cheesy 80's horror film or like a fan-made Blood spin-off and (incase you couldn't tell) that's awesome. However, the Wendigos are heart attack inducing nightmare creatures, and I am a coward, so I have not actually made my way through this whole game yet, and there is a strong chance I may never do so purely through being a massive wimp. Maybe one day though, I love everything about it that isn't the huge palpitations certain parts of the game cause me.
I've come back to this one much later, having spent a year vaguely wasting my time and deciding finally to finish Dusk. I'm very glad I did because, despite not being perfect or even my favourite of its kind, I definitely have a slightly higher opinion of the game. Though i'm not really emotionally cut out for horror, the atmosphere is fantastic throughout. Visually it's probably the most stunning retro shooter i've ever played, with some really ambitious areas to set levels in that really stick out in my head, similarly to Blood (a major influence on the game) where that carnival level has stuck with me forever, here you have some phenomenal looking places that really fit the murky cult vibe. I was going to say the most ambitious visual style of the shooters i've played, but then again i've played Cruelty Squad, so that would be lying. Gameplay-wise it's nothing hugely differentiating from the genre, though I do love some of the little touches such as being able to duel wield pistols and shotguns, much like Cruelty Squad (getting another mention)'s door kicking it feels like something that just belongs in the genre. I think it goes a bit over the top towards the end with all the enemies, in a bit of a Doom 64 way near the end (without trying to spoil anything), but it's nothing I couldn't get past so I can't hold it against the game too much. Overall just a really good playing experience, something that I generally look for in any game of this type. A big success and one I will definitely at least try to play again.

I love the original Tony Hawk's Underground, it was one of my favourite games as a child that holds some of my fondest memories of games in general and is one that even returning to many years later I love pretty much everything about. More than anything I love how it controls and I was pleased to find that pretty much any change to the actual skating here is for the better, including the fantastic focused mode in which you slow down time during a combo and it really helps you to nail them better. I also loved the carefully-crafted maps of the original game and those are mostly to be found here as well, so you'd imagine that this would just be the original but better right?
Unfortunately, there is something big that holds this game back significantly and that is the story. Now, story was never exactly hugely important to the Tony Hawk's franchise. The Pro Skater games that I've played have pretty much zero story elements and are just levels in which to accomplish missions, but Underground had a very simple yet grounded story that kept me invested. I love stupid cheesy melodrama and that game was perfect with it. This game is not perfect with it. This game traded in the attempt at making a half-gritty half-satirical angsty teen skater movie style story (which is absolutely stupid in premise but I loved it) for what cannot be described any other way than "insane". Although batshit may also fit. Pretty much every cutscene was annoying, it was almost funny in the sense of being so unfunny that it wrapped around again but I get the feeling from a 2004 skating game that there aren't many levels of irony to the humour. That means we are left with a game that thinks a big fat naked man existing is funny, and while arguably maybe that very concept in isolation becomes funny due to absurdity, it is not really funny in this game. Nor is most of the anything, from the edgiest of 2004 skateboard video game fan jokes to Bam Margera apparently being a psychotic arsonist who yearns to find feeling in his life again by burning down an entire skatepark village and attempting to kill everybody inside. That last bit is actually quite funny in isolation again. Anyway TL;DR the game plays really well but suffers from its surroundings. Not quite the game I grew up with, and I'd probably have to thank my father for that (he would not have approved of this game).