The unintentional mastapiece. This is the dumbest game i have ever played but because of that its also the funniest game Ive ever played. The story is pretty basic but the characters are what make it memorable, raiden is way better here, jetstream sam is actually a great character and ofc senator armstrong who is so fucking funny and the stuff he says during the final boss made me laugh so hard. This game is really dumb and over the top but it embraces those things and the dumb shit becomes some of the best things about the game. The combat is freaking badass and the bosses especially are the highlights of the game, they are long, sweaty, high octane, fuckin nuts to buts showdowns with badass music. These boss fights are challenging and i died numerous time to lots of them. The final boss alone is literally an hour long, fuck its good lol.

One of the best games ever made, period. Excellent characters, Snake, ocelot and The Boss being the highlights. An amazing OST. The stealth gameplay at first u have to get used to but when you do its alot of fun and there is a surprising amount of depth and hidden things that the game doesn’t tell you how to do. When you actually get the basics of CQC down its very satisfying to use. Also theres is a bunch of hidden details and secrets that you can find in the game, like secret ways to defeat bosses, hidden items and hidden cutscenes. The bosses are great with the final boss being the best. The game still looks decent surprisingly and the cinematography is what you would expect from Kojima. Its probably the best bond movie.

Its pretty much the opposite of the phantom pain, story is king in this game and its well executed for the most part. Theres a bunch of cool memorable characters and mindfuck plot twists. Having to play as raiden rather than snake didn’t really bother me, hes not a bad character and not playing as snake himself for once gives an Interesting perspective and snake is painted as a legendary badass so there was nothing to complain about there for me. The game has lots of clever and or entertaining bosses. The soundtrack is really great again too. The core gameplay is decent stealth action. There are some things that bugged me about it though. I think the level design gets pretty repetitive by the middle of the game and the backtracking accentuates this even more. Also gameplay wise, i think the section with Otacons sister is very weak. The sniper in this game feels like complete and utter ass unless you pop a pentazemin pill. There is also pretty much no choice to go loud, a stealthy approach is always a better option, enemies will infinitely respawn when alerted. This might sound like a foolish complaint because its a stealth game but other games in the series give you the option and its actually a viable way to play.

This game is odd, the art direction is very unique and cool, the music is also pretty neat. The story starts off pretty interesting but the intrigue fizzles out after a while and the ending feels pretty anti-climatic. The gameplay is good i think but there are some gameplay sections that take so long and are so annoying to finish which also links in with another complaint that the checkpoints in the game are soooooo bad. There is also a significant amount of stuttering on the ps4 during combat sections. The combat itself can be very fun, the destructible environments are really impressive and the telekinetic powers are fun as hell to use. Facial animations and dialogue can both sometimes be quite janky. The ashtray maze section is quite exceptional though.

The perfect ending to the series. The dumbest most fan service thing you will ever experience but i would be lying if i said I didn’t enjoy it. The gameplay is sharper than anything else in the series that came before it, the music is great, the voice acting is as good as usual. I really didn’t appreciate the Akiba and Meryl thing, that was just annoying tbh, the cutscenes go on forever and theres alot of exposition that could stand to be cut out. The bosses are pretty average apart from the final one but yeah its fun lol but not as good as 2 or 3.

Wasn’t expecting much from this game but to be honest, it was a blast from start to finish. The epic display of sheer brutality is absolutely wild. The scale of every area, boss and combat encounter is something to marvel at. Technically and visually this game is fantastic, lighting, character models and area design still hold up in 2021. The combat is really fun too, there is a wide variety of weapons and abilities to use. The upgrade system is kinda whatever but the general combat loop is engaging enough to where it doesn’t really bother me. The highlights of the game are definitely the boss fights and each of them ends with a cinematically gory kill and a QTE. Very cool stuff, the ost isnt bad either.

Playing this again this year made me appreciate it way more, it still has an abundance of issues but the pros outweigh the cons by quite a considerable amount.
I’ll repeat some things i said in my previous review, the plot is basic and kinda whatever and the combat is pretty meh but these things don’t really take away from the game because i feel like it nails other things really hard.
This is one of the greatest open worlds in all of gaming, even though it still relies on an overly obstructive mini map and a billion assassins creed question marks all over the map, The world is extreme impressive, i think out of every open world game i’ve played, this beats out all the rest solely based on immersion, the visuals, the sound design and the music perfectly ground you, the player into a believable and atmospheric setting. Just strolling the region of kaer morhen and exploring the ruins of old witcher buildings is so damn engaging, like you really do feel like you’re right there with geralt. And this level of engagement that the game manages to create in the player makes the kind of average combat mechanics feel better because you are fucking Geralt of rivia, one of the coolest characters in gaming, fighting monsters and shit, planning your fights, oiling your blade, drinking and brewing potions and none of that is at all necessary, the game is way too easy to make any of these things be mechanically required, but i engage in the systems anyway because i’m just so goddamn immersed into the experience, you do it because that’s what Geralt would do and not alot of games can create such a connection with the player. That being said, if there were more mechanical based reasons to utilise all these systems of alchemy, crafting, preparing for battle then i think the game would genuinely be on another level. Even as someone who has 100s of hours in the game, has played through on death march difficulty multiple times, there is still barely a mechanical encouragement to engage in these systems, the games combat just isn’t really suited to it in my opinion, fights end way too quickly for there to be that extra bit of thought. And even when you do find an enemy that has a considerable amount of health it will be because they are wildly over your level and then you can’t really engage with them until they become too ezy, there were literally no duels in the game that felt properly tuned, apart from the first available olgeird fight in the hearts of stone dlc, which is easily the best boss in the game and it is a fight that i think a lot of players will miss which is a huge shame.

Recently started with playing through this again for like the 8th time and I thought now would be a nice time to start a review.
Fuck me i love this game, one of my favourites of all time. The story, characters, world and combat are pure gaming perfection.
The plot is relatively simple but the characters are excellent, seeing kratos as an old grumpy dad is hilarious and depressing and seeing his relationship with his son grow is very reminiscent to what the original last of us did with ellie and joel. But also different in the right ways, kratos’s wife and atreuses mother turns out to be such a cool character when you realise everything she did at the end of the game and how she planned everything out. Its such an engrossing relationship to see morph in front of your eyes, set in a gorgeous corrupted version of norse mythology which feels so original and interesting to learn about. The giant statues, architecture and intricately designed enemies that you punch the shit out of, all work together in harmony to craft such a spectacularly miserable place to be. In a good way, it feels as if the odds are stacked against kratos and atreus and you end up caring so much about the pair and even mimir who is fucking hilarious, loveable and excellently paired with kratos. The story all builds up to such an ooooo!!!! Moment where you just cant wait to see what happens next. Fuck.
The combat is brutal, weighty and oh so satisfying. It’s definitely one if the most well designed combat systems of the generation. The shear variety and vast collection of distinct and beautiful looking combat abilities is simply fucking badass. The various combos, takedowns and ways to deal with your opponents is so fun to play around with. The enemy variety at first is very impressive but about half way through the game, new enemy types kind of stop appearing and this is kind of the only issue with god of war. It doesn’t really effect overall gameplay for me but there are some very clear re- uses of certain mini bosses and such. However this doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a single player game with an excellent story and actually great combat and gameplay, not just shooty shit in uncharted and lazy hack and slash combat, like in the witcher 3.
As a bonus i would also like to mention that the bosses are phenomenal, the ost is beautiful, the game looks visually breathtaking and it does the 1 take method of presentation better than 1917 by far. And overall its just such an ambitious and fresh new experience for us gamers to gush over. Hats off to cory ♥️.

This is a great open word action game but just an average RPG. Overall i was really engaged throughout my playthrough but there are clearly some deep problems with the game. Many of the RPG systems are bad or just underdeveloped and the general progression and levelling up is not great. Most skills are simply small percentage boosts and the looter shooter style of item acquisition is sucky and doesn’t really fit with the game in my view. The optional implants you can get at ripper docs are cool tho. You can give yourself a double jump, gorilla arms or mantis blades which are very cool. The gunplay itself is average but guns look and sound incredible. Melee combat is fine but has been done better in other first person games like dishonoured, its not quite as satisfying as you would expect but its serviceable. The driving is fine but a little bit too floaty, driving through the city with the radio on is very enjoyable tho and the city looks beautiful (most of the time) the general art designs and the look of the world and the fashion is all really cool and the general atmosphere the game gives off is perhaps its greatest strength along with its music which is one of the best osts of all time and its writing which is exceptional in both side missions and main missions. There are some really great characters that you can befriend. The overall impact of your choices and the ending are similar to how choices worked in the witcher 3, which means there really isnt a great deal of consequence for your actions, the 3 beginning backstories are really unimportant to the overall plot. The endings are fine, often bein very miserable. They dont beat the ME2 suicide mission but its still decent. The bosses are very few and far in between and they arent really too great. Now for the technical issues, oh boy. There are some horrendous issues that need to be solved here. My game crashed about 10 times in my playthrough and there are some other terrible game breaking bugs. If they fix these bugs and the game starts to look great on console i will up my score to 4.5/5

Thought it was about time to talk about sekiro. After completing it 13 times i can safely say that this was one of fromsoftwares best and in my view the best game that came out in 2019.
-WORLD AND STORY
The world of Ashina contains all the intrigue and depth you would expect from a fromsoftware game. Hidden secrets and clues lie in excellent environmental storytelling. A good example of this is in the senpou temple area. Through one mini boss, the armoured warrior, we are able to learn so much about the area. You can tell that the warrior is clearly not Japanese through just the look of his armour. Its quite similar to how a European warrior may have looked at the time so straight away fromsoft have created a mystery for the player to solve. Throughout the boss fight you can trigger dialogue where he speaks of defending his son so that he may be healed and if you previously noticed the piles of dead children that seem to be scattered around senpou then you can infer just like that, that the warrior had come to senpou hoping for his son to be healed by the monks rejuvinating abilities. What he didnt know is that the monks were using the children to try and discover the secret of immortality, experimenting and dissecting the kids for their life force. The armoured warriors son would have been a victim to this and the warrior himself dies thinking he failed his son and screaming his name. There are various examples if this in many of fromsofts games and its a really organic and satisfying way of creating a piece of lore which makes it all the more interesting and tragic. The main story here is basic but again they leave it down to how interested the player is in the world. There are some exceptional characters and the villain genichiro becomes very easy to understand and sympathise with. Sekiro himself shows growth over the game but he doesn’t have too much of a character to be fair. The voice acting performances, english and Japanese are both very well done.
-COMBAT
The reason you should pick this game up is the combat. Dark souls famously tests the players timing and patience, sekiro tests your reflexes and your confidence essentially, hence isshins line “hesitate and you die.” In short the combat system is really one of the best in games ever. The sword combat is absolutely exceptional but brutal. You must be close to perfect in your timing of deflections and blocks else you will be thoroughly punished. The boss fights are really where everything shines perfectly, clashing swords, going back and forth from deflecting and countering to striking at your enemy to try and break their posture is honesty one of the most satisfying things in a video game. The focus on posture rather than the health bar in some of these fights is really an interesting choice and more so than any other game ive played they actually feel like real sword fights because your actually crossing blades and it give the bosses these beautiful rhythms which compare most to something like a guitar hero, it’s basically a rhythm game and it feels so good to play because of that. The best bosses in the game are the ones that have this rhythmic feel, Genichiro, isshin (both versions), emma, corrupted monk and the owl. Then we have the guardian ape who flips pretty much all of that on its head which surely means it sucks? Nah lol. This for me was easily the hardest boss in my first playthrough because he is so different to the others which is why his placement is so well done. It forces you to learn another way of play pretty much throws everything you know out the window. Its truly a great fight. Easily the worst boss is the folding screen monkeys tho, they become a bit of a pain on repeat playthroughs. The mini bosses are also quite noteworthy. There are some really fun ones like O’rinn of the water and seven spears. The game also gives you the option to go stealthy wich lets you thin the heard a little or delete one of a bosses health bars before going all swords sparking. Stealth is no where near as fun as the sword to sword combat but the addition is appreciated.
-BONUS STUFF
The score is very well composed and amplifys the sweat that your balls produce when on the final phase of the final boss. The level design is alot more vertical than the souls games but there isnt really any of that interconnectivity that you would expect from a souls game which is a little disappointing but not a deal breaker. The bonus combat equipment like the prosthetics and the skills can sometimes feel very situational, firecrackers are far and away the most useful tool. The hidden quests and secret bosses are very interesting and many can effecf the ending of the game which is cool.

Overall its another banger from Fromsoft. Highly recommend.

This is indeed a good game. The plot while basic is very strong in the character department. The wild hunt as villians are meh but serviceable. Geralt is a great protagonist and his relationships are all very interesting to watch unfold. The music is fantastic and sound design is all around pretty decent. The world of the witcher is a fun one to dive into but the exploration of it is either really fun or really frustrating and annoying. Level gating and the mini map need to go and die. The gameplay is quite average overall, the combat is serviceable but its quite shallow and either too easy or too hard. Geralt also feels too floaty to control, he doesn’t have that weighty feel that he should. Overall i think its a pretty solid game thats carried by its great writing.