Recent reviews by Pendleton

Play Bloom and Rage, it's a better LIS sequel than this will ever be.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage feels like the culmination of everything DontNod has learnt over the past decade of game development, not just on a technical level, but on a narrative level too.

The game is visually gorgeous, with an incredibly detailed world and character models which DontNod takes full advantage of with some absolutely beautiful cinematography.

While I love both Life is Strange 1 and 2, in my opinion. They don't even come close to this masterpiece of a game.

This game has impacted me more than any other form of media in recent memory.
The closest thing I can compare it to was completing Mass Effect Legendary Edition after a 120+ hour playthrough, but even that pales in comparison to the emotional weight that this game throws at you in its final hours.

To put it short, the story is incredible. While some might find it slow paced in its opening hours, I implore them to keep at it and keep playing.

Upon completing the game I was absolutely floored, and after sitting on its themes for a little bit I decided it absolutely deserved another playthrough.

Bloom and Rage benefits GREATLY from a second playthrough, not just because you get to try new dialogue options and story outcomes, but also because there are so many details which hit completely different with the context of the second tape.

There is dialogue which completely brushed passed me during my initial playthrough which after playing the game for a second time, now has so much emotional weight knowing the context behind it.

I cried ugly tears throughout the entire closing act of the game - I'm a grown ass man, so that's one hell of an accomplishment.

I can't put into words how much this game has affected me, the impact it has had on me definitely won't rub off anytime soon.

Here's hoping for a tape three (A man can dream)

Considering many of the reviews of this game have been so damning, I thought I would share my experiences so far.
A game as important and historic as the Last of Us deserves a high quality port to match, and unfortunately this port does have its fair share of issues.
Luckily, in my experience things have gone very smoothly, and in my 6 hours of gameplay I've experienced but 2 crashes to desktop.
As for bugs and graphical artefacts, I am yet to run in to any of those either, so far The Last of Us has been just as I remembered it, a fantastic game.
The developers clearly spent time refining the UltraWide support and it shows, not many games support my 32x9 aspect ratio, especially cinematic ones, but The Last of Us handles it like a champ!
I believe the biggest issue with the game is its high V-RAM requirements, leaving many systems on their knees. As I have a 3090 with an absolutely ridiculous amount of V-RAM, I did not experience any issues that might be related to this. Although I did notice the game hogs up to 15GB of V-RAM at times.
This game has received waves of much deserved negativity during its launch, but I wanted to share my positive experiences with the port. While everyone doesn't have NASA grade PC hardware, at least those who do can rest easy knowing that they will have a mostly stable and very playable experience.
I hope that the underlying issues with this game can be ironed out in time, so that more might be able to appreciate the things this port actually does well.
If you told me back in 2013 I'd have to wait over 10 years for a PC port of the game, I'd have laughed at you. But now that it's out, it leaves me wondering if maybe I could have waited a bit more. Nonetheless, I've been having a blast, and I hope at least a few people out there have been able to as well.

If you like the sound of Justin Roilands Voice... This is the game for you! And if you don't... Play it anyway so I can watch your video essay on how much you hate it.

Update: Oh boy, I sure hope nothing happens that might make this review seem dated or old...

What an emotional rollercoaster this game was, the message it portrays is a hard pill to swallow for many of us. Yet small moments of kindness resonate throughout like a small flame in the dark.
In the few short hours I had with this game I grew incredibly attached to my 3 puppies and I will protect those little fur balls with my life!

While the game isn’t long that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I think I will be visiting this game many times again in the future, like Firewatch and SOMA before it.

Please don’t let it get overshadowed by Stray, give it a go. It’s worth it.

It’s good now I swear

My save file got corrupted when updating from the Beta of the game.

It's ok because now I get to play it all again.

This game is awesome, haven’t finished it yet but I’m having a blast so far.
I would’ve preferred a new Deus Ex but if this is what we get in it’s place honestly I’m not super upset.
Reminds me a lot of Mass Effect with the crew interactions and the story is fun, having me actually laugh out loud multiple times.
Despite a few small bugs the game runs great and it feels like everything was thought of by the devs, the squad comments on everything you do, making them feel like real people when the question why I backtracked 200m to collect something.

Having finished the Campaign I can safely say that this game is amazing, but no where near perfect. I didn't experience any stuttering during my time with the game, but had constant crashes during the inventory and loadout Menus.
During the introductory segment of the game I could not progress due to the game crashing every time I tried to configure my loadout, and the game forcing me to do so during the tutorial.
Luckily I managed to continue on through the game after multiple retries and had a good time doing so, although I would still receive a hard crash every 2-3 hours of play. (Especially frustrating when you are near the end of completing a mission.)
(My PC is no potato either, AMD 5950x and RTX 3090)
Anyway, at the end of the day I reccomend this game, but maybe wait until some of the kinks have been worked out.
Another masterpiece from Arkane Studios.

Now release Half-Life 2: Episode 4 already!!!

I bought Legendary Edition solely to romance Garrus.

Worth it.