No. Just no. This is way too hard. No, seriously.

I refuse to believe this was playtested. Ok, I know it was, but just what were they thinking? Almost every design decision taken in this game is abhorrent and nonsensical. Way too many boxes that are extremely boring to go out of your way to complete, artificial difficulty with 'gotchas' almost every 10 seconds, levels are just way too long, and what happened to the Aku Aku creates? Did they just forget that Aku Aku crates were one of the most fun elements of the franchise? There are levels in this game that don't have even ONE Aku Aku crate in it. What the hell?

I wanted to love this game. It's by far the best Crash has ever looked and felt, it's just so satisfying to control Crash, even the gimmicks are a lot of fun, and the visuals are simply gorgeous, and for that I'll give three stars. But it's simply not fun, and ill-designed. I think I stopped having any kind of fun after the second or third dimension, and I kept playing and frustrating myself just because. But I give up, it's just not worth it. I don't feel accomplished or satisfied when I finish a level, I just feel relieved that it's over.

The old Crash games were challenging, but fun. This is just hard, and frustrating and annoying. What could've been the best Crash game ever was just a boring 3d platformer game.

I'm sure this was impressive and awe-inspiring back in the day, but the sloppy, terrible controls and camera makes it a real chore to play. Sometimes I'll be having fun, mostly I'll be annoyed to hell. I wonder if people always ignored it's obvious shortcomings because there simply wasn't (and maybe isn't) anything like it.

This might have come as harsher than I intended — I admire this game, there were moments that I truly felt that sense of wonderment that for sure the game gave to so many people, but I just can't get over its age I guess. Maybe I'll try the PS4 version eventually.

The combat is a step up from automatic gacha like FGO, Epic Seven and the awful SinoAlice, but that's not saying much, especially when you have games like Arknights and Limbus Company which have a far more engaging and interesting combat.

The concept is very interesting, but the story and writing is your usual gacha mumbo jumbo that assumes you're already very much familiar with the story you just about started reading.

The English dub with a british accent, which I understand is supposed to be a pretty big selling point about this game, is...underwhelming, to say the least. That is, it was until I listened to the character with a chinese accent and I just fucking lost it.

The artstyle and characters are amazing, though, and the best thing about the game for me. I mean, what other gacha lets you talking apple? A girl made out of tube TVs? PICKLES THE DOG? Give me the apple that talks like an english butler over Paimon any day.

Can't see myself playing too much of it, but it seems decent at least.

Soma is great science fiction. I didn't get my hopes up as horror games are not usually my thing (I had already dropped Amnesia in the first 10 minutes years ago) and it took me too long to play it and so the hype I had at the start had already died down, but maybe that's good: I expected nothing and got everything. I'm also glad the developers included a safe mode because otherwise I would never finish this.

Some might say it does nothing new, that the concepts it explores have already been exhaustively worked with in in the last century, but I personally don't know of any other scifi works that deals with the concept of brain in jars in such a haunting and compelling way. And anyway, science fiction isn't just about novelty, but also about using old ideas in interesting ways, otherwise there would be no point in writing cyberpunk fiction after Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell (a notion Snow Crash and others would gladly disagree with).

The one thing that detracts from the experience for me was the voice acting. At first I thought the blasé and mostly unfitting way the two protagonists talked and reacted about the situation was intentional because of the "trying not to get crazy" cope mechanism, but once I heard another character talking in virtually the same way as he was about to die, I concluded the voice acting surely is a bit off-key. There are some good moments, but for the most time I felt it was a bit off. It's still mostly a nitpick, as it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game that much.