Rise was already my favorite game to play, and Sunbreak is exactly to Rise what Iceborne was to Monster Hunter World - it looks at what did work and what didn't work and then expands on the things that were already great while revamping stuff that didn't quite appeal to the players which personally made this an absolutely perfect experience. Such a ridiculously fun game.

As is tradition for MH expansions - it's bigger, better and harder than the maingame, so if you loved Rise this is absolutely worthwhile.

I also wanna give a quick shout-out to Follower Quests - I'm pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable they are. Feels like they actually took a shot at making their characters a bit more memorable and enjoyable, and it paid off really well. Really fun stuff, Fiorayne's fantastic.

Aside from the way some of the characters get treated, this was a really fun experience.
It was a little slow to click with me at first, everything up to and including the first class trial is basically a tutorial so it's almost painfully obvious as to whodunnit (also didn't help that my favourite didn't last long) but once things got going and the trials became more difficult to solve from the start, it became a thoroughly engaging experience.

The twists that the game throughs at you, especially towards the end are incredible and I completely love how the whole mastermind thing turned out, really memorable moment.

The music is really good too, having played Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth it's easy to tell that they were done by the same composer, hell the title themes for both games are very similar lmao

Overall a really enjoyable experience with a few problematic issues and the dialogue verging on a little too juvenile at times with a memorable cast of characters and a story that is thoroughly engaging

Celeste is a game about Madeline. A girl trying to tackle her anxiety and depression by climbing a literal, and, figurative mountain that stands in her way in the form of the insurmountable obstacles that stand not only in her way right in front of her but the battles that she has to fight inside of her own head. In a way, Celeste makes sure to make you understand this by being an extremely hard platformer that will have you dying a lot, but, learning a lot from it along the way and not wanting to give up.

Each time you complete a chapter or complete a hard section of this game, it not only feels deserved but it feels rewarding. Despite being bad at platformers myself (2000 deaths, I didn't do any of the side content) I never felt like giving up because Celeste isn't a game about that. You can take a break and step away and then come back at a time when it's better for you, when it's better for Madeline and for her state of mind.

The game isn't unfair by any means. It doesn't try to pull any gotchas on you or put you into situations where the platforming is nigh impossible or only for veterans of the genre. Yet, it's still challenging in a way to represent that not only are you trying to overcome this hurdle, but, this hurdle itself is synonymous with Madeline's own internal struggles.

Yet, I'm not gonna try to make this review a spoiler-laden one. Celeste as a game is very important. The issues it tackles are given the importance they deserve and are handled in a way that I never thought I would see in a video game. In a way, I'm so very happy that something from my favorite medium was able to not only speak up on these topics but speak up on them in a way that is so very right. Sometimes even jarringly so. Though, don't let that discourage you! This is all praise so far because of the fact that the message it did give me was one that I'm so glad I was able to take away.

Of course, the message Celeste gives to people is always a different one dependent on your situation or who you are as a person. The only thing I can really say is that you should go in and play it yourself! Whether you are bad at platformers or not, this game is a must play for anyone.

BioShock used to dominate the gaming landscape in the late 00s, though (due in no small part to how abysmal BioShock Infinite ended up being, leaving the game's legacy as a bunch of Source Filmmaker porn of Elizabeth) it's mostly fizzled out of relevance in the modern day and age and is mostly regarded as a "classic" by those who were savvy to FPSes in the heyday of the Xbox 360.

I think the context around the gaming landscape at that time is important to consider when thinking about BioShock's success: FPS games had just begun to recover from a run-and-gun plateau of bland game mechanics that had plagued the genre ever since the release of Half-Life, with major players such as FEAR in late 2005 slowly starting to spice things up and the release of Call of Duty 4 just around the corner to usher in the age of the military shooter. A lot of FPS games in this period had a vaguely sci-fi inspired aesthetic and setting influenced by the genre's forefathers like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and (later) Half-Life and Halo, and was overall more than ready for some change.

Then comes BioShock, with its emphasis on player customization gameplay that prioritized clever usage of gadgets and powerups as much as it did gameplay – not to mention the still-charming retrofuture aesthetic and late-sixties setting. It was near-impossible to escape BioShock in the late 2010s – I was obsessed as a kid. Combine that with my burgeoning interest in video games as a medium of storytelling and a weird, dormant fascination in body modification, and you get me being utterly obsessed with BioShock as a result.

Anyways – like the title suggests, BioShock is a spiritual successor to the System Shock series of immersive sims, and while it doesn't have nearly the depth or potential for complexity as either System Shock game it has a lot of non-mechanical Shock blood in it: the classic "voice on the radio" companion, audio logs as a means of storytelling, the "lone man in an enormous otherworldly structure far removed from society" plot, the silent protagonist, the horrific atmosphere and emphasis on body horror... you get the idea. In all but gameplay it's Shock under the sea, which is perfect by my blood.

The game's got soul - soul in excess. Where it lacks being a complex and fully-realized RPG, it makes up for how damn charming it is in its little details – the fact that you can physically see the plasmids' powers coarsing through Jack's veins, the fact that most of the most powerful weapons are visibly homemade, the effort put into the hokey 50s ads for the plasmids and tonics. It's just so fun to be a part of and lose yourself in, and the lovably stanky mid-00s Havoc physics make it a blast to screw around with the mechanics and bend them to your whims.

Writing! BioShock is much more notably somber and tragic when compared to System Shock's emphasis on cyberpunk cynicism and sterile, inhumane environments. Pretty much every BioShock character is already dead by the time Jack arrives in Rapture, and that makes it that much more gutwrenching to retrace their steps into their downward spirals and piece together their stories. The future (or lack thereof) of Rapture sits on the shoulders of Jack, a slave to his fate who was born and bred to fulfill this one specific purpose... and yet depending on player choice he can either rise above the constraints of his creator's will, or claim their power as his own and succeed them as Rapture's tyrannical overlord.

There's also distinct political themes which are not the least bit subtle – the recurring theme of criticizing libertarianism and using Ayn Rand's writing (namely Atlas Shrugged) as a framing device is spoon-fed to the player from the outset, and Rapture stands as a testament to the end result of a society left without regulation, propelled forward only by the hubris of its inhabitants: a brutal industrial wasteland where the innovations of capitalist moguls has brought society to its knees, put a gun to the back of its head, and pulled the trigger.

...which, unfortunately, is all near-completely unintentional, Ken Levine having stated on multiple occasions that BioShock is intended as an allegory for how all forms of political doctrine are flawed. Much as I love BioShock, the sheer fact of all I've talked about being a happy accident docks this at least half a star for me.

Anyways! All this to say: wonderfully charming game, stands out as a classic of sorts for the crowd who truly cares about FPS games and one of the few from its heyday that stands the test of time, and that BioShock Infinite sucks enormous donkey cock and can go die in a freak grease fire incident.