Ghostwire: Tokyo is a first-person horror game, developed by Tango Gameworks from the mind of Shinji Mikami, and what an experience this was.

• The world of Tokyo is fantastic! They nailed the accuracy, architecture and city of Shibuya perfectly, from the many alleyways, to the many buildings and shops and even the city square! I spent moments in the game just taking it all in and the occasional rain that would come whilst playing was also a nice touch, really adds to this disappearing, "dead" world that they're showing off here. They nailed it with TEW 1 and 2, and they did it once again. Hats off
  
  
• The story, while basic and nothing too special, was actually decent enough that I was able to follow with what's going on. To sum it up, you play as Akito, a man who gets into a bike accident on the way to see his sister, and gets brought back to life by a wraith known as KK, who you develop a relationship with and try to figure out what's happening to Tokyo and why everyone's disappeared. Oh, and also getting Akito's sister back from the bad guys. Some good moments, okay boss fights and an interesting ending that made me think for a minute on how hard it can be to face the truth
  
  
• Akito and KK's relationship is something that shouldn't be underestimated. In fact, this is one of the strongest parts of the game, seeing the two banter, make jokes and open up to each other about their own personal lives and experiences. KK is this, hard hitting, rough and elderly person who is serious about everything and hard working to where his family became forgotten to him, and Akito is a young, courageous and caring man who struggles to deal with the death of his parents and doesn't want his sister to die. This became more apparent as I was completing side quests and completing activities, particularly the school quest, which opened my mind to their dynamic being well executed
  
  
• Enemy designs are amazing, some of the coolest enemies I've seen, being based off of Japanese folklore, specifically yokai. Each had different attacks and moves, never felt too bland or boring to fight
  
  
• Combat consists of "Eternal Weavings" or spells, making use of 3 elements: Wind, Fire and Water. Think karate but with magic. Each element has light and heavy attacks, which you get by charging an element up, alongside a special attack that unleashes the elements further. Some are better than others, like Fire being able to turn into a flamethrower and stunning packs of enemies, whilst Wind can be used to rapid fire and shred enemies within a few seconds. Pretty enjoyable and something different. Reminded me of Bioshock a bit with plasmids
  
  
• FREE CONTENT! A while back, Ghostwire: Tokyo actually got a content update, expanding the world of Tokyo with new locations, an amazing side quest storyline which felt right at home with TEW, new attacks, a rogue-like game mode and many more. I didn't notice it until I looked the content up myself, so it felt natural, and that's a good thing!
  
  
• Side activities were similar but different, with the highlights being praying to statues, hunting different yokai and collecting spirits, which you take over to a payphone and get rewards. The similar ones would be finding collectibles and cleaning these tori gates, much like outposts in Ubi games to introduce more content, and ofc, the side quests
  
  
• The game... Looks great! I thought it was going to look a bit dull, given the low game size of 22gb and lack of graphical settings, but no, the game looks good and runs like butter, didn't have any issues at all
  
  
• VFX, sound and music - levels, especially the VFX when using different spells
  
  
• On a side note, collecting spirits in this game... WAS SO ADDICTING! I loved gathering these and could not help myself to go for them as I was making my way to different areas, so much so that I decided to stop using fast travel!

• The side quests are so boring. Monotonous, boring tasks where you're basically helping spirits out with their problems because they can't seem to do it themselves. I was interested to hear the dialogue for each of these quests at first, but then I got so bored that I just started skipping them halfway through, wanting to get them done and keep the game going
  
  
• The most common negative is that the game is repetitive, and I agree. Combat can start feeling the same, enemies will feel familiar and the aforementioned side quests, like many of the game's activities, can get pretty boring. You can fix this by just changing what activities you do and spells you use and such to help remove this feeling, but you won't be able to escape this feeling after 5 or so hours
  
  
• Shallow progression system - They pretty much took the system from TEW2 and put it into this game. Wish there was a bit more to it
  
  
• The game's main antagonist, Hannya, is underdeveloped and is more or less a menace than an actual threat. The game's way of giving you obstacles is just fighting his family, and outside of his talks, he's nothing special or interesting. He just exists for the sake of the story
  
  
• A bit expensive for the amount of content you get, even with the free content best to buy this game on a sale and not full price

Ghostwire: Tokyo may be one of the most bizarre games I've played from recent memory, expecting a linear-horror game and instead getting something entirely different. With a great art style, amazing representation of Tokyo and interesting combat, there's no other game I can think of that is quite like it.

RAGE is id Software's first fray into the open-world genre, capitalizing off of previous successful titles in the post-apocalyptic setting during its release, such as Borderlands, Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

• If you've played an id Software game before, you'll know what to expect with gunplay. If not, I am pleased to report that the gunplay is the best aspect of this game. Guns feel punchy, satisfying and fun to use, with a good variety of weapons and ammunition types, open for experimentation and being more effective against certain enemies, such as armor. They sound really good too on another note
  
  
• The wasteland is fun to explore, with activities to do, things to find and places to explore and loot. This game puts a major emphasis on looting and scavenging, so pick up EVERYTHING you find
  
  
• Simple and easy to use crafting system, using components found from areas or enemies and making different items (buffs, quick use/consumable items, permanent health boosts, grenades). Can play a big part in some aspects, like making lock-grinders which are pretty much lockpicks that are used to open rooms that usually have high tier loot
  
  
• Vehicles are serviceable, nothing too crazy but enough to get the job done. Nice steering and driving controls, vehicles can be upgraded with parts and combat is a simple lock-on system. There is one caveat: no free look, so you're mostly just driving with your keyboard and occasionally shooting when you need to
  
  
• Loved the mutant bash and the races to take a break from the occasional shooting, which is what you'll be doing majority of the time in this game
  
  
• Decent enemy variety, you fight humans and mutants. Humans are your usual fodder enemies like most games, with the addition of heavy enemies and mutants are your fast and hard to kill enemies, swerving whenever you aim at them and such (if someone knows what this mechanic is called, please let me know)
  
  
• A lot of the level designs, such as Dead City Central and Subway Town really reminded me of Metro 2033 (which came out before this) and I really enjoyed that, given the post-apocalyptic setting
  
  
• DLC adds a few extra hours of content, a new weapon, faction and new areas. Pretty good value as well if you just want more RAGE

• Texture pop-in is something that I experienced and even with trying the Graphics fix from the game's community hub and changing some settings around in-game, I still couldn't fix it. It turns out that the anti-aliasing is what keeps the game from always rendering textures, so that's why you deal with it all the time, so if you turn it down to around 2x or even none, you shouldn't have problems with it. Something to point in case people are pedantic or peculiar with this and don't want to bother going through effort just to remove this issue
  
  
• Level design is so bland to the point where it began to annoy me mid-way through. Having to go to the same areas multiple times just for a quest or a job outside of the main quest soured my experience and bothers me to why id Software just didn't make entirely new areas for these side quests (eg. You go to Dead City two times, one from the streets to central and the other from central to streets).
  
  
• Wish that NPCs played a bigger role for the player: Yes, there are some NPCs that give you quests and have dialogue, but most of them are kind of just there. Definitely could have had more opportunities or quests to give them presence
  
  
• Driving can be a bit weird at times: Your car can feel slippery on even the lowest of speed with vehicle upgrades, to where you'll sometimes just spin around and do donuts. It's fairly odd whenever it happens
  
  
• Story is terrible and forgettable: Basically, you play as a man who is one of the chosen members for the ARKs, these pods filled with people beneath the surface. You wake up out of cryostasis, everyone's dead (ring any bells) and venture out into the wasteland, discovering that a faction known as the Authority wants these ARKs for themselves and destroy humanity. The friendly faction you join is called "The Resistance"... Yeah, how cliche. You just trek on and become an errand boy, doing things for people. It doesn't really go anywhere and the ending did set it up for a sequel, but they ended up botching that in RAGE 2.
  
  
• Performance can be iffy if you play it out of the box, use id5 tweaker to unlock FPS and make some further improvements to what you like. Also, the graphics fix guide on the hub as mentioned before is good too. Game is locked to 60 by default, but I was able to set mine to 120 and be flawless the whole way through. Anything over that puts you at risk of crashes

Despite the mixed reception I have, I still think that this a game worth picking up for a short but fun experience. It's got some cool things that distinguish it from other id Software games and the gunplay was enough to keep me playing till the very end. Get it on a sale.