The Callisto's Protocol of Bioshock

Essentially Xbox's companion piece to Infamous: Second Son. A fun playthrough, despite its cookie cutter open world design and occasionally cringy characters.

Wow, just wow! I was completely blown away by what I thought was going to be a mere tech demo! This game's visuals, controls, haptic feedback, and COUNTLESS easter eggs deserve acclaim! What a way to start the PS5. And FOR FREE?! If you have a PS5, there is no reason to ignore this title. Coming in a short 2.5 hours, this bite size adventure is one I will remember for a while!

This review contains spoilers

I had very high expectations for Giant Squid's newest project, having enjoyed their previous title "Abzu" immensely. In fact, it was the only next gen launch game I was truly excited for. While I did enjoy my time with the Pathless, I was let down somewhat by the artistic design, which mostly remained consistent throughout the whole playthrough, marked by deep blues, reds and orange. Part of why I loved Abzu was the thrill of discovering each new section, seeing new fish, new enemies, etc. The Pathless however, was pretty similar, and I struggle to differentiate the first three areas prior to the (spoilers) Snow Section. I think this game could really have benefited from either a desert or underwater location on the island (perhaps a callback to Abzu). This would have provided more environmental differentiation and modified the gameplay similarly to how the snow section did with the wind gusts. I also found the enemies were quite similar in their design as well, being some form of walking beast with 1 or multiple heads. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the traversal system and found it to be a fascinating and smooth innovation. And as always, I enjoyed the art style employed by Giant Squid, despite the limitations. In regards to the game's length, I found my 6 hours or so to be slightly longer than necessary, and felt the game could have shaved off around 20 minutes in length to be a more tightly woven package. Overall a solid title from Giant Squid with room to improve on the next. Looking forward to it!

Story 3/10
Gameplay 6/10
Graphics/Animations 5/10
Music 6/10

Game was too long and slow paced. Not exactly the SMT x FE crossover I was expecting...just could not bring myself to finish it. If you like Persona 5 but have never played any other JRPG, play Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Ni No Kuni or Dragon Quest instead. If you choose this instead you'll just be wishing the whole time you were playing P5 instead.

I got bored about halfway through the game. The appeal of this rpg is the near unlimited choice that the game offers you (ex. you can kill literally any NPC in the game), and it's excellent capitalist critique. However I found the story to be not quite gripping, the graphics underwhelming (with significant pop in) and the gunplay to be very weak. Felt like running a FPS from the early 2000s....and not the good kind. Also (and I know this is standard for Fallout style games), not a fan of the centered camera angle + poor facial animations of NPC interactions. Always took me out of the experience. Hopefully Avowed will be better.

Fun for a couple of hours. Better with friends.

My personal favorite from the series. More indulgent than the later games, and its for the better. Fun with friends.

Fun with friends. Goofy as hell.

Almost made me shit my pants in high school. Fun to play with friends/to kill a couple hours with. Set your expectations low and you may have some fun.

2014

Played the demo and that was all I needed. Play dishonored instead, it's not worth your time. Lame gameplay, poor optimization and long loading screens. Really not "next gen" (or even previous gen).

Fun as a gimmick. While controls aren't the most accurate, I enjoy this one more than the mobile version simply because you can actually pretend to be a ninja while you wave your hands wildly through the air.

2010

Mario Kart but with licensed vehicles and a slick aesthetic! What else could you ask for!?

For me, this is when the series really started to drop in quality. By reusing the Far Cry 4 map, the developers began dropping these "half" Far Cry games in between the mainline titles, which led to a decrease in the quality of the main games (as they devoted resources to games like these). Game is tedious, boring and a grind crafting wise.

2016

Fun to play and beautiful, just not enough to do. Also was not a fan of locking sports behind DLC....just include them in the base game to begin with.