This was the last Arkham game I played of the four, because i'd got into the series with City and I was alive and arguably sentient enough to remember what I recall being pretty heavy distaste for this game around its release. Now things have cooled off since then and i see a good amount of praise for this one, particularly I see a sizeable portion of fans say this has the best story of the whole series. And when I first played this game, while it was still my least favourite of the series, I enjoyed it a good amount. This time around, that was not the case. That being said there are things I enjoyed here. The combat is roughly the same as before and so is the stealth, two generally agreed upon strong points throughout the franchise. However, it seems like past a certain point they do just throw enemies at you repeatedly as a roadblock, and each time these groups of enemies are at least half made up of the really tricky buggers who will fuck with your combo significantly if you aren't lightning fast. I've never been the best at games and I will be the first to admit that, so it does definitely come down to a get good scenario, but I never had this much trouble in City or Asylum and I played those on normal just like I did this one. I have no complaints with the stealth really, that has always been the very peak of the series to me and I am totally onboard with every new trick they throw your way to force you to get creative with taking out guys. I love the jammers, mined gargoyles and everything. While we're on the gameplay aspect, I think the boss fights can be mixed but there are definitely some really good ones. Deadshot is better than his City battle (though that wouldn't have taken much), Deathstroke's fight is awesome and feels like a genuine battle against an equal footed opponent, and Copperhead's fight is very entertaining visually with all the Copperheads showing up and her contortionist fighting style. That said, I got sick of Bane after the first time, I don't really enjoy that running attack at the best of times, much less when they put a bunch of the ridiculous tricky enemies on top of it, and though the final Bane fight is super creative, i've never been able to reach it without being extremely frustrated so i've never been able to enjoy it. As mentioned I love the stealth so if it was in a better game or after something less annoying than how I find the Blackgate section towards the end i'd probably be able to find it fun, unfortunately i've just not had that experience. Now onto the story. I love Batman as a character, have since I was a child and since grown to really appreciate much of his wide cast of rogues and the stories surrounding them. Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy this story. That said there is a lot to enjoy here, and a hell of a lot of potential in it, but I feel a fair amount of that is missed. The corrupt police stuff is great, and the natural thread of Batman learning to co-operate with Gordon who is the only non-corrupt cop on the force is very fun. There's great potential in characters like Black Mask who had not been explored at all in this series to this point, and great potential in the first contact with the Joker. Unfortunately, the potential in Black Mask is not explored here either as he is barely in the game, instead being the Joker in disguise for much of the story and his appearances are limited to being a little bitch who Joker is easily portrayed as above. Joker beats him easily in a fight, makes him kill his girlfriend, steals his gang and kills everyone who refuses to join him, probably also walked into his office and wiped his arse on the curtains. I like Joker a lot and i'm fine with him being presented as a threat, but it's a shame it came at the expense of a potentially interesting main villain just so he could be the big bad of yet another game in a row. Considering the only other time we see Black Mask after this is Red Hood literally killing him, so long Black Mask you will be forgotten. Back to the Joker, i'm not a huge fan of his portrayal here. That's less about how he is presented because I understand he isn't going to be the Joker of City yet, but more in the fact that I find it hard to see this series' Joker and then hear not Mark Hamill. Hamill is synonymous with many voice-overed Joker adaptations for a reason; he's incredible as the Joker, and Troy Baker (no offence to the guy who is a great voice actor) doesn't work for me. His voice sounds all off, and I don't find his writing as strong as it were for Hamill either.
I've realised i've rambled a lot here so i'm going to cut it short here. At the end of the day I have a lot of opinions about this game because I love this series, so naturally I want to love this game. There are definitely things I do still love about this game too. Unfortunately, there's a lot I dislike, and a certain portion I really can't stand, that drives me away from this game unlike the two prior that I would happily play over and over. I'm disappointed that I can't like this one as much, but overall it's not a bad game. It just isn't entirely for me, and not what I love about this series.

Arkham Asylum was a great game and despite having since loved Spider-Man since first engaging with the Arkham series, this is for my money the best superhero game ever. Where Asylum had a simple but effective story, City's story is fantastic. This time it's (from what I know) a mostly unique Batman story, with great twists and turns without straying too much from the source material, but always having its own strong identity. City's world is also fantastic, it feels like a real living criminal underworld with incredibly well done personalities for the more prominent characters. Joker is once again a particular stand-out, but most of the villains more important to the story such as Strange, Penguin, Freeze and Two-Face are very well done too. The side missions are a lot more prominent than the predecessor, where instead of just a pair of collect-a-thons, we have some genuine thoughtful side-quests that give prominent features to some of Batman's less lauded rogues. Zsasz is far better here than he was in Asylum for my money, he is sinister and downright evil as all hell compared to Asylum's portrayal of him as mostly just an obstacle. The Hush missions are phenomenal and only serve to annoy me more that Knight missed the boat so badly with him. Deadshot is done well, Mad Hatter's brief appearance is really strong, and Azrael is interesting if a little underdeveloped. That said there is also the Riddler. I love the Riddler as a character and I think that side of him is done justice here, but i'll be damned if I ever do his side-quest again when I inevitably pick this game back up for another run through. The rescue missions are fun and the final mission is good too, but after the 50th "go here, break a panel and the trophy is behind it" I was really to pull my hair out. I always love the actual riddles in all these games but the trophies have never been something I went after, and unlike my surprise enjoyment of them in Asylum this time I think i'd made the right call previously. It didn't hurt my enjoyment of the playthrough though, because this game and world in general are so damn strong. I'm looking forward to the new Spider-Man 2 game coming out, if only because I desperately crave more games like this one, as I think this is the very peak of a superhero game and one of my favourite games of all time.

A great start to a strong series, that series featuring maybe the best superhero game of all time (at least so far). The story isn't too complex but that isn't a problem at all, as the main thread of the game in Batman vs. Joker is easy to do well and with the writing for Joker and the fact it's Mark Hamill you're set up for greatness. None of the other villains really match up to Hamill's Joker performance but there are definitely entertaining characters to be found. Any time the Scarecrow shows up is a particular highlight, as the first time through the game it catches you off guard and any subsequent times through his appearances are a joy to relive. The hallway fake game crash scene is pretty much iconic for a reason. The combat and stealth systems are fantastic, as each fight moves very smoothly, and each stealth situation is incredibly rewarding if you can take it carefully and patiently, surveying the room and taking everyone out one by one. This time round I also went after the Arkham Chronicles and Riddler challenges, and unlike later installments where i've never had the drive to finish them it was a lot more enjoyable. Perhaps the smaller scale of the map helps with that but I never found myself frustrated or bored with them. I've always found the riddles to be particularly entertaining but this time the trophies were much more fun too. If I had to find a fault with the game, I think that the boss fights are a little uninspired. None of them are particularly fantastic because they tend to just be "fight the goons then the boss' weakpoint" repeatedly, but that's fine because the combat and stealth make up for that. Overall i'd say this isn't the peak of the series, but a fantastic start point and storywise sets up well for its incredible successor.

Only beat the singleplayer, not the multiplayer. There really isn't much to say about such a well-known oft-discussed beloved game like this that hasn't been said a million times already, but i'll go ahead and make a few points that are already overdone anyway. This game's characters have so much personality, much more than its predecessor in which Glados was already an extremely funny and well-done character. In this one she has a whole arc, and we also have more fantastic characters however important (Wheatley) or tertiary (Cave Johnson (I think he was called)) they were to the story, they all felt extremely well written. Also total sidenote, as a big fan of British comedy it's still weird to hear Stephen Merchant trying to be evil, but he's great in this. The puzzles are great stuff too, a lot of very creative additions to how the test chambers worked, loved all the gel stuff as it was both creatively challenging and extremely fun to fuck about with. It's just a really great game, as you'd expect. Portal 3 when

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).

Finished the first ending of this game and decided while i'm definitely sticking with it to probably full completion levels, I think I am ready to rate and review it personally. At first I wasn't getting it at all, mostly because I didn't bother to look at the controls, but eventually I died enough times to be afforded the luxury of eating corpses and managed to use a slightly less shit gun and I was pretty much sucked in from then on. There were still moments that were somewhat annoying in difficulty (i'm thinking of the bog level) but much of the difficulty felt rewarding to overcome, like getting round the giant mech monsters in Mall Madness or finally beating the boss in Archon Grid. I love games that make me actively want to go back into places and explore them again, and this game seems all about that as you are able to go back to any level with any different equipment, there's all sorts of hidden items to be found and hidden levels too. It almost feels like the perfect cocktail of elements that get me addicted to a game, and i'm really nowhere near finished with it but I definitely already love it.
I have now beaten pretty much all of the things, including the purchasable level's three evil tendrils, the headquarters' secret level hp sponge boss and also running across a dark plain away from hundreds of golems towards a giant orb in the sky. That's what kind of game this is honestly. It's definitely fair to say that pretty much everything about the game has stuck to me, from the incredible aesthetics to every feature that you wouldn't find in other shooters of the style right down to just kicking a damn door open which should be in every single shooter game because it is a god-tier addition. I don't know if i've got to the point of completion yet as there are a few implants and weapons I haven't got a hold of yet but all in all this game has stuck with me strongly, basically embedded itself in my head which is essentially exactly what I think the game hopes for, and it is one that will probably influence everything I ever do. So yeah i'm probably gonna kill some people 10/10

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.

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.

So wow, this was a real kick in the teeth. Super Metroid was definitely challenging but this game really takes the cake with it. I've read that the first playthrough here is one of the toughest experiences in the series and, though having only played this and Super Metroid, I can fully believe it. Pretty much all enemies hit for a fair whack of a damage, bosses are a real pain the first few runs through before you get used to them, this game really just kicked my ass and a few times it wasn't in a "rewarding to beat" way but a "holy shit fuck this" way, if you'll pardon the language. There were absolutely moments of greatness that I'd expected coming off the back of Super though, the atmosphere while not quite as peak as its predecessor is definitely strong. Whenever SA-X shows up its almost survival horror like as you are completely useless to face it and have simply to run and hide and hope for the best. A couple of the bosses were intriguing and rewarding in presentation and defeat respectively, namely Nightmare and the second fight with the security robot. However, a couple more of the bosses were absolutely painful to fight including but not limited to that bastard spider and the plant thing's entire room being like a single room bullet hell. I'm still glad I played this game, it bringing out my violent tendencies a few times aside. Fusion is a worthy sequel to Super, continuing the story in an interesting way, and definitely keeping up (though never quite matching) the fantastic atmosphere and exploration that you'd come to this series for. Not sure if I could play it again though, I value my heart-rate a little too much.