I really thought I would feel different about this game during, and after my playthrough.

Spider-Man 2 is a masterful upgrade to the previous two entries when it comes to visuals, traversal, and even combat. Unfortunately however, these are the only things that managed to really "wow" me this time around.

Spider-Man 2 is a predictable and short story desperately drawn out by uninteresting slogs of playing as Peter, Miles, or MJ just to reach that 20 hour mark. The non-hero gameplay, the poor writing, and the drop in quality of free-roam dialogue (quips, soliloquies) hit me like a truck here, and I quickly stopped caring about anything going on in NYC, or between characters.

Swinging around NY felt incredible, and while I did my best not to use the web wings whenever I could, the execution of them is admittedly near flawless. Sometimes the flashier movements felt a little over-the-top, especially as Peter's Spidey, but the way they handled transitioning between so many swinging animations is just so cool, it's hard not to love.

The Platinum trophy respected my time, the suits ranged from amazing to "okay what the fuck is that?" but were generally good, and Howard's side mission is far and beyond the best content in this entire game.

Insomniac has a pretty spectacular team making these games, and what they achieved technically is outstanding, but it came with a lot more bugs than previous entries to the series. I had multiple hard crashes, got stuck several times, and had an abundance of visual glitches, including becoming the infamous white cube.

I want to love this game, since its undoubtedly an improvement, but the safe and uninspiring story and lack of character visually, musically and emotionally is really holding it back. I hope the next Spider-Man game can reach further with its personality using music, culture, and visual style to create something that can be more than the sum of its parts. I'm not disappointed. I enjoyed my time playing this game, it just didn't pull me in the way Spider-Man PS4 did.

Dead Island 2 is fine. In our state of gaming discourse, where anything below an eight or a nine out of ten is automatically bad, it was always going to be somewhat of a pariah. The extended development cycle featuring three separate developers certainly hasn't helped its perception, either; the expectations that come from a game in the oven for that long are on either side of an extreme, and reality rarely meets it.

The funny thing about that, though, is that if Dead Island 2 was released in 2015, I don't think it would have been as fascinating. Released a year after the overly ambitious sequel to its spiritual successor, it's almost refreshing to have a game this scaled-back. There isn't an Open World here; if you thought the original game kind of played like Borderlands, the immediacy with which you're asked to leave to the second area so soon after stepping foot in the first only cements that further. Unlike Borderlands, the appeal of this is pretty straightforward. With or without friends, you kill zombies in increasingly violent and silly ways. That's it. There's character building through a Skill Card system, but everything boils down to whacking the flesh off the undead while you drop-kick them in the head. The physics can use some fine-tuning, but the gore is a work of beauty. The question of, 'When was the last time you saw an action game try to sell itself on its gore?' is answered succinctly the first time you decide to keep hitting a zombie after you've downed it. But that question also has another answer attached to it: Dead Island 2 is decidedly low-stakes entertainment. It's aware of how silly its predecessor was, and it doesn't do anything to change that. It's just a better, more consistent thrill ride with genre enthusiasts who couldn't care less about having a prestige-worthy script attached to their games in mind. The worst that the nearly decade-long wait has done for this game is that it's fooled many into thinking that this either isn't enough or that there would be more to this. But I've been having a blast with this so far, so I really don't mind it.

Where your mileage will absolutely vary is in terms of this game's writing. I've heard many comparisons to last year's Saints Row, and while I can't personally make that connection, I can see where it comes from. From the offset, the team behind this was very open about the angle they were taking with this. You don't call Los Angeles 'Hell-A' if you're trying to tell an emotional, engaging story. It's pure camp, down to dated references and goofy caricatures you'll either find bittersweetly nostalgic or downright embarrassing to listen to. I'm finding the chatter to be less annoying than your average Borderlands character and I actually like the cast of characters in this so far. But if you were unable to play Borderlands 3 without muting the dialog, I wouldn't consider this an improvement.

If you want a throwback to what games were like a decade ago and you're going into this without expecting the world of it, this is a pretty enjoyable time. This is definitely not the bargain bin game some are making it out to be; at worst, I think it's worth waiting for it go on sale if you're curious but skeptical. If Dambusters keeps it at or above this level of quality, they might be developers to keep an eye on.

Got through the entirety of Dead Island 2 over the course of a few months with a friend of mine. Pretty good!

I remember feeling so ripped off by the first Dead Island game way back in 2011, so going into this one, my expectations weren't very high. Especially factoring in the whole development hell this game went through.

For game that went through as many development restarts as it did, Dead Island 2 turned out about as good as it possibly could. It's strength and weakness lies in it's simplicity. It's a no-brainer (haha) to pick up and play. Within minutes, I was chucking limbs off of zombies and soaking in the great looking environments. The skill card system is alright and I felt like it added some fun customization options to the combat but it also wasn't very deep. Eventually, the game boils down to just doing big damage numbers to enemies and farming your ultimate attack.

It's maybe 25% too long? I platinumed this in about 25 hours and by the end, it felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. Dead Island really doesn't change enough from the first few minutes of the game to the last few minutes of the game to make it stand out as something truly great. But the hack and slash mechanics are just fun enough to make this easy to recommend, especially in coop.

Good game. Even better coop. Just don't expect it to do anything too crazy. What you see is what you get with this one.

Palworld is a decently fun game with several features that are borrowed from other big entries such as Ark, Valheim and, in some ways, Pokémon.
People have been over reacting and deeming this game the Pokémon killer, without it even being competition to Pokémon. Apart from the monster hunting/taming involved, Palworld is much closer to Ark, the dinosaurs being replaced by elemental creatures.

Palworld is simply too far to replace what Pokémon is. Some people say it does what Nintendo doesn't, but do we really want a heavy focus on guns and base expansion or layers upon layers of crafting in an actual Pokémon game? The latter has always been about catching and battling with the monsters. How these two games are still being compared is baffling.

As of writing this, the game is in a honey moon phase, itching many PC gamers' itch for a quality monster hunter game and it does serve its' purpose when it comes to that. I feel like the somewhat janky movement, the several designs stolen from Pokémon and the overall pages of menus and sub menus threw me off a little. Not to say it is a bad game, but it is definitely being over hyped by media.

Still, not a bad pickup if you like Ark and survival crafters in general. It's a very decent experience, especially considering it's budget.