Really great Star Wars Souls-like. Good acting, impressive visuals, and fun exciting gameplay make this one of the best Star Wars games I've ever played. The story is serviceable, definitely could use some more time in the oven there. Also there were a good number of bugs and the support for ultrawide aspect ratios is not great. At the very least, every modern game should have an FOV slider. If that doesn't deserve a knock to the score, the bullshit with EA definitely does. THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY A STEAM GAME. When you buy it on Steam, you are buying a license to the game on EA's Origin. So, there are no Steam achievements (my biggest gripe) and Origin has to open and remain open whenever you play (meaning if Origin breaks, which it often does, or there is an update for it, opening the game is interrupted by that). If that issue isn't a deal breaker, I'd recommend this game to Souls and Star Wars fans alike.

Quantum Break belongs to a genre that many people find irritating or even downright awful, that being the extremely linear action shooter. People sometimes say games like this bleed over into the category of walking simulator. While I understand all the complaints about how restrictive making a game like this can be, I still love a well made one. And if Quantum Break is nothing else, it is REALLY well made. The graphics, the cinematography, acting, sound design, all of it is so polished it makes the presentation of many other games look downright weak. I think the limitations that Remedy had to work within to make this game so linear allowed them to focus on getting every little detail right. The graphics are a perfect example of this, specifically the lighting and faces. The lighting is mind blowing, realistic in a way most games could only dream of looking. I understand from reading online that a lot of it is baked, but it still looks incredible. And the faces are the best I've ever seen in a video game period. They are highly detailed, yes, but it's the animation and performance capture that makes them really come to life. And they do this while avoiding the uncanny valley that games like LA Noire fall into. Looking at Remedy's latest game, Control, these elements are still great but somehow don't look as good as in Quantum Break, a much older game. I think that has to do with the fact the Control is much more open and gives the player real control (pardon the pun) over the world and interactions. While Quantum Break brings that perfect presentation and ludicrous level of detail that Remedy is known for, it's not perfect. The story doesn't feel as important when so much of it is out of your control. The Junctions provide an illusion of being able to control the story's direction, but that's all it is: an illusion. And the PC port is nothing short of atrocious. NO FOV slider, the game wouldn't actually display at my screen's resolution without config file tweaking, horrible motion blur that you can't get rid of, and the game is basically unplayable on anything other than a supercomputer unless you use the upscaling option that renders the game at 2/3 resolution and makes all of Remedy's careful detail blurry. Plus, while the Steam version supports ultrawide, only a select few of the cutscenes are displayed in 21:9, even though they are all in-engine and could easily be shown that way (you can see the black bars fade in and out seemingly at random during some cutscenes). There's a lot to love here, but while the story is deep, the gameplay is shallow, and we won't get to see this game in it's full glory until we all have dual 4080ti cards installed.

A perfect sequel to a great game, this is like Ori and the Blind Forest had a baby with Hollow Knight. The combat is not quite as tough as the latter, but that's more than made up for by the ridiculous platforming. Seriously, it's bonkers. (in a good way) The only complaint I really have is that the story is just kind of a rehash of the first game, and a lot of parts feel repetitive (there are of course many of those signature chase sequences throughout). To this games credit, however, the boss fights here and combat in general are a million miles ahead of it's predecessor. As is to be expected, the music and visuals are just as beautiful as always, especially with HDR and higher quality assets.