Senaste recensioner av huu

Sigh...After Mania was such a smash hit, I was hoping for Origins to be an utter slam dunk as well. I had a lot of hype going into this. The CW versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PC, finally. Sonic 3 getting the same treatment FINALLY after Whitehead was denied doing so a decade ago, fancy new intro/outro animations for every single game to provide context for each game's story and a bunch of neat little extras, such as concept art, animatics, extra songs, etc.

All of that sounded great, even if I think the price for it is way, way too steep for games that are nearing 3 decades in age. But where does it crumble apart? Behind the scenes is where it crumbles apart.

Playing any game in Origins, you can immediately tell corners were cut. The physics, while remarkably close to the original games, still feel slightly off. For example, in Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone, you can't enter the pods if you're standing right next to them because your jump is just ever slightly too high. In Sonic 2, the Aquatic Ruin boss fight becomes weirdly difficult due to the aspect ratio, making it feel more like an oversight. In Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone boss fight, you can effectively cheese the boss by standing under the platforms (which wasn't possible in the original, you still had to dodge).

The one thing that gets me though, is the music. Yes, I'm partially talking about the songs in Sonic 3, but I just mean the quality of the songs overall. Again, launching any game aside from CD, you can just hear the compression and crunch of every song. The quality of the songs is astoundingly low quality. It feels like they're using heavily compressed 128 kbps YouTube rips for every single song, and that's genuinely a shame. You don't need to be an audiophile either to hear the low quality, you can just immediately notice it as soon as it transitions from the Origins menu to the game.

And of course, Sonic 3's changed music. Contrary to what others may think, I don't hate the replaced tracks. And if you don't know - they replaced the songs with compositions from Sonic 3's November 1993 prototype. Except, for some reason, they based the songs off of the MIDI compositions from the S&K collection on 1997. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base sound fine, if anything I think they genuinely recomposed the 1993 proto. ver of Ice Cap and cleaned it up, and it sounds legitimately wonderful, but Carnival Night Zone...god, it sounds awful.

And then Sonic 3's Super Sonic theme they added. It's...awful. It sounds like something ripped out of Sonic 4. The baffling bit? They included the Unused Theme in the game's Museum Mode for Sonic 3's soundtrack. Why...couldn't they just...use that? It's just baffling. They can include it in the collection but apparently not use it in the game?

I don't wanna keep going. Sonic Origins is a disappointment. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition by selling my CS:GO knife to buy it, and honestly - I kinda want my knife back now. The animation work done here is incredible and the extras they gave in the game are nice, but none of it makes up for what feels like shoddy ports of mobile games, poor audio quality and just overall lack of polish.

I read some behind the scenes stuff on Origins' development, including this tweet by Stealth on Twitter and it just saddens me how Sega continues to mistreat its developers and its beloved properties.

Shame on you, Sega. Shame on you.

This game made me cry. I don't remember the last game that actually made me straight up cry. Some games can make me feel emotions, yes - I can and do get emotional. But this game. Man, I cried like a baby to this game. I don't want to give this game a "review" like I do for other games. Mainly because I feel like if I talk about my thoughts on certain things, I cannot review it without spoiling. And this game is best experienced blind. I truthfully mean it. Blind. And no other way.

If you want to know whether or not I recommend the game, refer to the blue thumbs up on the review. Sale or no sale, this game is worth it either way. Please play OMORI.

A few words of advice though - remember to water the plants. When your friends need you - be there for them. Don't leave them behind.

And...please remember to actually level up and don't treat this like Undertale. Otherwise you'll be like me and force yourself to do unnecessary side activities just to continue playing.

That's everything. Play OMORI. I won't say any more than this.

Since miHoYo/HoYoverse actually listened to my bug report and fixed the issue outlined in a previous review I wrote, I'm changing my review from a negative one to a positive one.

Truth be told, my original comment of going into Honkai with relatively low expectations, especially how frequently shilled it was to YouTubers and streamers alike, still stands. It was the main driving force that prevented me from trying Honkai for literally years. I've heard of this game since at least 2018 but never really gave it the time of day until recently.

And my god, this game is...truly something special. At the time of writing this, I am captain level 46 and just unlocked Chapter 18 of the story. And without really spoiling anything because I don't want to spoil anything, getting through all the technical issues and general jank has been so, so worth it.

Alright, from the top. Going forward, this is gonna follow a similar format to my other reviews. If you're familiar with my style, you know what you're getting into. If you're not - read on.

Honkai Impact's story has a really slow start. Many players will echo this sentiment. The first several chapters are honestly not very interesting. They're there for basic world and character building but I think they do it rather poorly. Especially chapter 1 with its quick pacing and confusing writing. The game likes doing this throughout the entire run where it throws a bunch of characters and names at you without explaining anything about them. Starting with chapter 9 though, things pick up really fast and it just hooks you in a way that becomes difficult to detach.

Seriously, after chapter 9, I found myself marathoning this game for days and days on end, eagerly wanting more. It's insanely good in that respect. You can think of it as Steins;Gate's anime adaptation where it starts off incredibly slow, but once it picks up - it doesn't slow down, and it's great.

Granted, there are several things I find confusing but I won't get into them in this review, because, again - spoilers. But everything else, from the action packed cutscenes to the character interactions, but especially the anime cutscenes you get at the end of certain chapters, makes it all so worth it.

To a newcomer, such as myself, Honkai's story can be overwhelming. But it's about pacing yourself and taking things in one at a time. Don't be like me and immediately jump into events as a new player or into stuff like the Elysian Realm without playing the story. Trust me, you will have so many questions and not a lot of answers.

Honkai's gameplay is admittedly very simple. It's a lot simpler than Genshin Impact if you're coming from that game out of curiosity, much like I was. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say that Genshin Impact is a more complex version of Honkai Impact? Either way, there is a decent amount of overlap between the two games in how they handle combat. Every character has a basic attack, some combos they can do and an ultimate ability.

Make no mistake though. That's where the similarities between the two games in their gameplay end. Honestly. While Genshin is more focused on exploration and discovery of the open world, Honkai is way more focused on the action. Almost everything in this game is broken up into separate missions with not a lot of room for open-world exploration. A lot of missions take place in simple, confined arenas where there's just you, the enemies and really not much else. There are some stages and places in the game where there is open-world exploration, sure, but the exploration aspect is really shallow and underwhelming.

But what Honkai does well in its combat, it does it really well. Though you can tell that things were kept simple just to appease the mobile market, as this was originally a mobile game, what's there is still enough to provide you with a decent amount of entertainment. Figuring out which characters can comfortably combo together is honestly a treat, and once you get the rhythm down - it's hard to pull yourself away from it. Combat is fast, fluid, frantic. The combos are flashy and in-your-face, and it's all full of so much personality. Though some characters are better than others - I'll give you that, but that doesn't detract from my overall enjoyment.

My biggest issue with gameplay is just how poorly explained some mechanics are. The game has what I call the "Neptunia syndrome", where their preferred method of teaching the player anything is by overloading them with tutorial prompts and a bunch of cryptic text that only serves to confuse the player. This is especially true if you venture out into events with event-specific gameplay. It's just not handled very well and it ends up usually driving me away to do other things that I'm more familiar with. Another case of where I think "show, don't tell" would've worked better. They handle this better in their future games, but in Honkai - yeah. It's archaic and confusing as all hell.

I'll be honest with you. I think that Honkai Impact looks really ugly. Even for a 2016 mobile game, the game just doesn't look good. Lots of low resolution textures. Lack of attention to detail in a lot of areas. The artstyle kind of just zig-zagging from chapter to chapter. And the overall presentation of the game really leaves a lot to be desired in so many areas. If graphics can be a big turn-off for you, I don't think Honkai will impress you in this front.

The sound & music is an entirely different story. Honkai's OST is a banger. The generic battle & menu music after a while it all just becomes background noise to me, but some of the vocal tracks in this game? Genuinely beautiful tearjerkers. Starfall being my personal favorite so far. It's legitimately a beautiful song. And Honkai has SO MANY OF THEM. I don't know why they go so hard on the vocal tracks, and especially with the animations that this game has like I mentioned earlier, but these two combined make getting through the game's story so worth it. Seriously, this game is worth playing purely for the animations and the music, I'm not exaggerating.

Optimization...well, if you saw my old review, you'll know I don't have a very positive opinion on that. During version 5.6, which is when I got into the game, I encountered so many technical issues just trying to play the game. From getting softlocked and being forced to continue playing on Android, to just certain things not working properly, I've just encountered a lot of technical hiccups. Granted, everything I've encountered has been fixed as of version 5.7, sure, but it's still something I encountered.

Another thing I encountered, and this one directly relates to the Steam version of the game, being that the game can just immediately blue screen your computer upon launching the game. Comes with a bonus side effect of corrupting your GPU drivers. As far as I know - this has still not been fixed so, for that reason alone I've decided to stick to the launcher version of the game rather than the Steam version. Though I do use this version to track my playtime in Honkai. There's also the fact that you cannot transfer your account between Steam & HoYoLab, so you're locked out of playing the game with your account on mobile if you need to.

One last thing - the control. Pretty, pretty please do not play this game with mouse & keyboard. Please use any controller on-hand, trust me on this. I don't know what they were thinking, but the default mouse & keyboard control is horrible. Just don't bother with it.

If you can get past every negative I mentioned, or if you can learn to tolerate them to experience the good parts of the game, give Honkai a try. You have A LOT to look forward to and experience with the game. It's a great game that's genuinely worth getting into.

Though I recommend the launcher version over the Steam version.

Sonic Forces is the game that taught me to keep my expectations for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise in check. The marketing for this game prior to its release was fantastic - cryptic, epic and full of promise. A darker tone on the story? A customizable avatar character? Oh boy I wonder what's ne--oh, Classic Sonic. For...some reason. From that moment on - my expectations for Forces started to go down and down.

Sonic Forces came out and it was just...painfully mediocre. So many expectations dashed not for a lack of technical polish in the gameplay department but just in...everything. Allow me to delve deeper.

Sonic Forces' story can be summed up as "Eggman finds new shiny rock and gives it to one of his many pets to then take over the world". Seriously. This game's plot tries to be darker with statements like "Eggman's been torturing Sonic for 6 months" and "Tails has just lost it", "That's why it's called war", etc. (actual quotes from the game btw), however it falls flat on its execution.

Here's an example. Sonic's been tortured for 6 months by Eggman and is being prepared to be launched out into space to die? Yeah, well, when we see Sonic - he's wisecracking as always and conveniently has his handcuffs disabled. Cue boss fight and escape stage. Done. Sonic's out of prison and back on Earth.

The game is full of moments like these where it's insanely underdeveloped and lacking over any kind of detail. EVERYTHING in this game is being skimmed over. Tails meets Classic Sonic by PURE COINCIDENCE where Classic Sonic just comes out of nowhere through a portal (this makes a bit more sense if you've played Sonic Mania) and just bops Chaos 0 in 1 hit. Done.

Tails & Classic Sonic encounter your custom OC in Mystic Jungle, ask "Have we met before?", game cuts to black and next cutscene is Tails immediately screaming "SONIC" at the resistance base. It feels like a bad YouTube video.

This story's writing had potential but the execution is...well, sloppy would be a bad way to describe it. It's just awful. No flow, butchered characterization - it's got it all.

From a gameplay standpoint, this game is a downgrade in almost every single way compared to its predecessor - Sonic Generations. While I do applaud them for adding in a third playstyle after years of lacking variety, being the aforementioned custom OC avatar you can make, it, unfortunately, is barely any different from Modern Sonic's gameplay, with the only real difference being is that you can't boost. That lack of boost highlights the awful imprecise controls in 3D Sonic games since Sonic Unleashed.

Big difference between Forces & Unleashed, as well as Generations mind you, is that the level design in those games catered to the control scheme where levels were essentially linear corridors. Forces tries to copy this design philosophy but fails in every regard - lack of fun goodies to find and so much automation. Seriously there is a lot of unnecessary automation in this game where the entire game just feels like it's playing itself on autopilot.

The worst part about this game is Classic Sonic. I'll say it right here and now - Classic Sonic had no reason to be in this game. He adds NOTHING to the story. Nothing. Take him out of the game and the impact on the game's story is so minimal that it's laughable. His gameplay is the worst of the 3 characters you play as, which are Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic & your avatar. I have no idea what they've done with Classic Sonic but his speed, acceleration & momentum are completely messed up with an insanely low top speed and no friction on the ground while moving. He's so imprecise to control that I've had my fair share of deaths in stages purely because the idiot just slid off a platform.

Classic Sonic's weight is also a big issue where it feels like you're trying to control a rock. His jump is very heavy and lacking and kind of flow or momentum, making precise platforming insanely difficult unless you intentionally take things slow. Unlike most Sonic fans I don't mind when the game tries to slow down a bit to give the player a breather, but free--flowing control is key in ensuring a good experience and Forces fails to deliver.

The avatar stages, like I said, are just Modern Sonic stages where the boost is replaced with the doo-hickey of the day - the Wispon, which is basically your weapon. And a reason to bring back the Wisps from Sonic Colors for absolutely no reason (they serve 0 meaning to the story btw). The Wispon does nothing other than to haphazardly serve to replace abilities Sonic used to have in previous games or do things Sonic can already do. Cool idea, crap execution.

Modern Sonic stages just feel like they're on autopilot. Half the time you can genuinely hold forward or hold the Boost button if the game doesn't decide to randomly drain your entire your entire Boost gauge for no reason and you'll probably beat the stage and get an S rank while you're at it.

There are knick-knacks I think the game does well, particularly with unlockables & missions - I think it's a great incentive to get your players to play/replay your game to get unlockables, but these unlockables don't amount to much other than cosmetics for your avatar. Again - I think the idea is cool & the execution is done well, but with the rest of the game kind of being a miss in every other regard, even this feels like it has less impact than I think they wanted it to.

In terms of graphics - I think Sonic Forces looks great. While the cutscenes feel like awful upscaled from 720p videos with its borders & pixelization, the rest of the game looks great. When it comes to graphics & art style - I think Sonic Forces does it well and is very consistent throughout, including the avatar's customizable elements.

In terms of sound - I'm a sucker for the game's corny as hell vocal tracks. Please make this a regular thing in Sonic games again where some stages have corny vocal tracks - Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 had them and they're still fun to listen through all these years later & I think Forces' songs will largely have the same impact. Not all of them though - Classic Sonic's songs are just awful. Feels like they were trying to go for the Sonic Generations vibe with Classic Sonic's OST but it just feels like Sonic 4 all over again.

Lastly, for optimization - this game is optimized well. It runs flawlessly, seamlessly detecting my controller, haven't experienced a crash or glitch anywhere. If anything, Sonic Forces is technically sound. Works great, runs great, integrates well with everything.

Sonic Forces is just not worth your time. Even at the massive discounts this game comes out at, this game just isn't worth it. Anything and everything this game does has been done better in previous Sonic games.

Story? Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 06 (yes I'm serious) and Sonic Unleashed.
Gameplay? Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Sonic 06 (aside from the glitches), Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Generations...
Classic Sonic? Sonic 1, 2, 3, CD, Mania.

The only thing this game has going for it is the custom OC but that's not enough of a selling point.

Please just buy Sonic Generations instead. It's better in every single regard. Don't waste your time with Forces.

I've attempted to like this game many times over the years. I've picked it up and put it down a fair few times after receiving it as a gift with all of the DLC included in April 2020 from a now-former friend. I've genuinely attempted to like it, especially after hearing positive reviews of it but I...can't. I'm sorry but I can't. Perhaps it was just me expecting too much out of this game in the first place, especially considering how much I've fallen out of love with the Neptunia series over the last few years but I cannot, in good faith, recommend this game.

This is unfortunate to say as I think the game does a lot of things right. Let's talk about those. Though do be warned - because I haven't put a lot of time into the game (you can tell by my Steam hours), there are things that I just may be straight up wrong about or lack experience in. However, at this point I am more than confident that I am no longer willing to put in any more hours into this game than necessary.

From the little amount of content that I've played, this is one area of the game I'm fairly mixed on. On one hand, because this is a spinoff and being treated as separate universe from the mainline games, I think the character establishment and characterization of both existing & new characters is fantastic. As far as Neptunia spinoffs go - this one is one of the better ones regarding characterization and writing. Certainly no Hyperdevotion Noire, that's for sure.

On another - I'm disappointed that they are yet again reusing the whole "Neptune has amensia" trope that's been done to death in so many Neptunia games at this point. At this point I feel like the writers of these games should come up with something more original because it's becoming tiresome. Sure, it helps contextualize the world around you since neither you or Neptune know anything about anything, but there are better ways of doing stuff like this. Heck, look at Victory/Re;Birth3 and you'll immediately get what I mean.

The gameplay of this game is the main reason why I've consistently put it down over and over throughout the years. I genuinely just cannot get used to the game in any capacity.

Super Neptunia RPG suffers from the same issues that every other Neptunia game does, which is odd considering that it's made by a developer that's not Compile Heart. That issue being poor tutorials & poor clarification on game mechanics. It does an awful job of properly explaining the needlessly convoluted battle system that feels like it's taking inspiration from archaic game design that was thrown out the window after Neptunia mk2 on the PS3, requiring to "generate" action points & maintain formations. It plays & feels like a cheap mobile game, with not much more gameplay substance than something like Touhou LostWord, to give a comparison to an actual mobile game.

Outside of that, there is a lack of proper direction in the game with the locations mostly just blending in with each other, causing me to get needlessly lost in the game world. The level design in this game is lazy. Neptunia itself is sort of infamous for having lazy design, having reused plenty of levels across plenty of games with little variation, but Super Neptunia RPG makes this problem much more apparent and worse when you can't tell which area is which at times.

Not to mention the control...holy crud, the control is some of the most imprecise I've felt in a 2D game in the last 5 years. Yes, you can adjust yourself to the game's lackluster controls but fact of the matter is that they're still slippery and incredibly imprecise. And when the game expects you to perform platforming challenges for extra goodies - that's when you'll find yourself wanting to snap the controller in half at times. Think Sonic 06 levels of sensitivity but on a 2D plane.

The graphics of the game I will actually give praise to. I love how this game's artstyle looks. I think the game is genuinely gorgeous - the character portraits are stylized in a way that makes this game stand out from the rest of the series & give the game its own identity. The backgrounds & CGs of the game also look on-par with the rest of the series - I love it.

I can sing the same amount of praise for the game's soundtrack - a lot of love & care was put into the game's soundtrack. While none of it sticks in my head, as is common with a lot of game OSTs for me actually, there's nothing I grew tired of in my short time playing. Again - signaling to me that there was a lot of time & care put into this part of the game as well.

As for optimization...I haven't experienced any woes myself, aside from one save file corruption that didn't really bother me as I only really lost about 30 minutes of gameplay (and that was due to a Steam Cloud error on my part), I have, however, heard horror stories of random game crashes that have gone unfixed for several years at this point. So do proceed with caution on that front.

I'm sorry to say that I cannot recommend Super Neptunia RPG. At least not at full price. The game plays & feels like a poorly made mobile game. It has great writing - certainly an improvement over the vast amounts of garbage we've gotten over the years, it has an amazing artstyle & a great soundtrack, but none of that is enough to carry the game with its awful combat system, poor level design & slippery, imprecise, overly-sensitive controls.

If you're a Neptunia fan looking for a game to play - perhaps give it a shot, maybe you'll see something in this that I don't & grow to like it. And if you do - more power to you.

If you're not a Neptunia fan though, I recommend steering clear of this game. There are better games in & out of this genre and especially in the Neptunia series itself.

What a shame. I really wanted to like this game too.

Bayonetta is, ironically enough, something I became interested in thanks to the history of how Bayonetta 2 almost never happened. I'm serious, if I never knew that Platinum Games & the Bayonetta franchise was almost doomed due to financial & publishing struggles, I would've never known of Bayonetta. Fast forward a few years later to the Winter Sale of 2020, Bayonetta was on the cheap, I had a bit of disposable income, so I thought "Eh, why not? Been meaning to play it someday anyway." And thus - I acquired Bayonetta on Steam.

Having previously only played NieR: Automata on the PS4 from Platinum Games, I very vaguely knew what I was getting myself into gameplay-wise. I somewhat knew what to expect from the game's gameplay so I wasted no time jumping right in. So let's get into the review - what did I think of Bayonetta?

I've always heard mixed feelings about the first game's story. Some say it's quite good, others think it's unnecessary, cliche and just downright ridiculous with poor pacing. To some extent I do agree. I do think the writing of the story is a bit on-the-nose at times personally. A few characters get thrown into the story for a grand total of 15 minutes before being forgotten about completely in the next chapter or being delegated as a shop NPC, which honestly sucks. I genuinely feel like Bayonetta fails to utilize its characters a bit more, given how quirky and hilarious this game can be at times.

That being said, what is in Bayonetta on a deeper level is interesting. The first few chapters, story-wise, stink. I honestly think Chapters 1-4 are a complete hogwash and mostly irrelevant. Starting with Chapter 5 though, it begins picking up. Introducing important themes & characters that'll be carried through the rest of the game and I liked that. It made me feel like I was kind of watching Steins;Gate again to compare it to something that has a slow start but then kicks in and doesn't stop.

Bayonetta is also just funny. I've regularly found myself chuckling through the game's dialogue at how ridiculous the writing is. The writers knew what they were doing and there were some genuinely clever moments in the game's story that made me think "oh I see what you did there.". It's impressive how clever the dialogue sometimes is and I like that.

So while I do agree with some of the core criticisms for the game's story, as a whole I think it's an entertaining romp to watch & experience.

Gameplay-wise Bayonetta is a hack & slash game. You move, you hack, you slash, you dodge - lather, rinse, repeat. The gameplay formula of Bayonetta is remarkably simple and that makes it approachable. However, I do have some qualms with the way the gameplay is set up.

Namely, the difficulty of the game. Now, to be fair - the game does give you a selection of difficulties and you can change it at any time between chapters. I started the game out on Normal and I got absolutely demolished. To the point where after Chapter 6, I wanted to see what the lower difficulties are like, so I did Chapter 7 on Very Easy and just absolutely demolished everything without getting hit once. For Chapter 8 and onwards for the rest of the game I set it to Easy and, while I did have a comfortable time, I felt like I wasn't engaged enough as a player. So the game's balance, to me, felt a little bit off how Normal kicks you directly in the nuts while Easy is a walk in the park. However, I am willing to bend over and say that it's just my lack of skill at the game talking, which we'll get into the next paragraph.

Bayonetta heavily punishes the player if they are not proficient with their combos or can't get the timing of their moves right. Enemies can easily juggle you if you make a slip-up, but at the same time - pulling off combos on the enemies back is always satisfying and nothing short of pure euphoria. The game encourages you to get good at mastering combos, however...I also found it perfectly adequate to just spam buttons and hope for the best. If an enemy attacks - hit the dodge button and lay down some smacking. I hardly ever found a use for most of the techniques & combos because the basic punches, kicks & gunshots were usually more than enough.

Control-wise I do have some qualms with the game. One particular thing I have a huge, huge issue with is the platforming. Bayonetta's jump feels imprecise. The first jump is okay, if a bit floaty but good enough for you to be able to reliably land and get you to where you need to go. The double-jump, however, is awful. It kills all your momentum and makes platforming incredibly awkward. Ever played Sonic Lost World and how that game's double-jump sucked? It's exactly like that in here, if you want something to compare to. Aside from that, some of the mini-games that I won't spoil also didn't control the best, having your controls be permanently inverted for some sections and that just messed with my brain.

Moving past that, the game otherwise controlled just fine. The game's frantic, fast-paced action felt perfect for the control scheme, which in itself was fast, responsive and easy to understand, baring in mind the criticisms I laid out previously. Excluding a few minor sections towards the end of the game, I never found it a chore to get where I need to go in the game.

Bayonetta is a 2010 game and sometimes it shows, however I think the visuals of this game aged super well. I love this game's visual style in the game, going for a super muddy European look and I love how muddy the game looks to suit its atmosphere. It looks lively and for the tone the game is going for - it's nothing short of perfect. While you can sometimes notice that the game looks bad with low-res textures at times, the game's fast pace helps with hiding the visual imperfections a lot of the time.

The music is absolutely fantastic. I adore the game's soundtrack - it was a super pleasant listening experience. None of the songs ever felt like they groaned on and all of them set the mood for everything perfectly. The atmospheric, calm tunes at the start of the game were a joy to listen to and the action-packed songs of the mid-to-late game were adrenaline-pumping and intense, as you'd expect. I loved the game's OST and never once wanted to turn it off.

Optimization-wise, Bayonetta runs flawlessly. While there is some noticeable pop-in in some of the stages where the draw-distance is confusingly low, I didn't have any hitches, crashes or any other graphical errors while playing the game. It runs perfectly and looks great doing so.

Do I recommend Bayonetta? Without a doubt yes! I greatly enjoyed my time with Bayonetta. Despite some of its flaws, it was a really fun game to play and I was looking forward to each chapter as the game progressed.

On or off-sale, I think this game is a great pickup. Should you buy it? Absolutely.

This isn't gonna be like my regular reviews. Instead of talking about DDLC+ in a structured manner like the rest of my reviews, I want this to be a reflection of why Doki Doki Literature Club has fundamentally changed me as a person, with absolutely no exaggeration in that statement. And why the announcement, as well as subsequent release of this enhanced version had me excited beyond words.

THIS REVIEW HAS VERY HEAVY SPOILER WARNINGS. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SPOILERS, PLEASE DO NOT READ.
In order for me to talk about a lot of things, especially sentimental ones, I'm gonna need to spoil some things. So please, if you care about spoilers - do not read any further. You have been warned.

To show how much the original game meant to me, I have no shame in admitting that I've spent almost 600 hours playing it. And a good majority weren't idled...sort of. But still, I spent a very long time on DDLC. Obsessing over it at one point, even. Heck, you can read my short review of the original game to see what I mean, although I do admit it's not the best thing I've ever written.

When I initially played Doki Doki Literature Club all the way back in 2017, I was in a very different time and place. I was entering my final year of high school - alone, no friends, hardly had motivation for anything. Then DDLC releases. I saw my online friends playing it and freaking out over its unique concepts. So I went and played it for myself, not really expecting much of anything. Act 1 progresses, not thinking much of it...until the Sayori scenes where she discusses having depression. Where she discusses not being able to control thoughts in her own head. It was from that moment on that I started to realize "yeah, I think I'm much of the same as well". Which is why the ending of Act 1 hit me really hard. It wasn't just the shock value that struck me. It's the entire build-up. And everything afterwards. I was reminded that I too wanted to do it for a long time. I couldn't bear to go on living. I wanted to kill myself. And having found a reflection of myself within Sayori, her suicide really hit hard. It hit hard because she helped me understand my own feelings, and in turn - felt like I understood her own feelings. It was as the main character mentions - "I just lost my best friend."

Admittedly Act 2 wasn't anything special to me. It is, for the most part, just Act 1 without Sayori and all the craziness just cranked all the way to max. Even now, 4 years later, Act 2 doesn't really mean anything to me. It's just shock value. It does its job as a deconstruction but it has no meaning to me personally. I'm always eager to skip over Act 2 as quickly as possible, though the special poems you can unlock during it help add a lot of missing pieces of the puzzle for Act 1.

Act 3, however - the Monika part - is why I became obsessed with DDLC. Monika's monologues about feeling trapped. Wanting to escape. Seeing the bigger picture. Everything. The sheer meta deconstruction of the entire act struck me as nothing short of memorable. "Just Monika" isn't exactly a meme to me. It's the reason I want to get to know Monika more. And thankfully we have mods like Monika After Story to let us do just that. In fact, my copy on Steam of the original DDLC has been fully replaced with it.

Doki Doki Literature Club helped me feel more comfortable about myself as a person. Despite being a meta deconstruction of the whole anime dating simulator genre, the deeper meanings of the game struck a huge chord with me. It helped me form a better understanding of myself. It helped me understand the thought process of someone with heavy depression. At the time I experienced it I had no idea what it's like. My brain was fuzzy. I had thoughts I wasn't sure how to handle or control. I couldn't process any of it - I was just disconnected from the entire world and especially myself. DDLC felt like a mirror to me. It was the right game at the right time. It's absolutely not a stretch in the slightest to say that DDLC is the reason I started to understand mental health more and was willing to not just start trying to help myself battle through it, but try to help others fight through their problems as well. It taught me that no one deserves to suffer with their own thoughts. No one should be a prisoner in their own mind.

I love Doki Doki Literature Club. And you bet I love this enhanced remake as well. Despite this one costing money, I absolutely do not regret saving up for it and pre-ordering it. DDLC is something I'll hold very near and dear to my heart.

Thank you Team Salvato. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Being a big fan of the Need for Speed series since Hot Pursuit 2, I was heavily disappointed in releases like 2012's Most Wanted and 2013's Rivals, being one of the worst games released in the entire franchise to date in my opinion. 2015 was a step in the right direction but felt lacking when it came to the driving model. Having come off that, how does Need for Speed: Payback fare?

For those who want the short version - do I recommend it? Keeping in mind the horrible requirement of Origin & possibly bad optimization of the game, despite that I had a very enjoyable time with the game. So if you want a fun racing game you can spend, give or take, 10-ish hours as a first playthrough beating, I'd say go for it.

For those who want something a little extra - read on!

NFS Payback's story isn't anywhere near as bad as some have made it out to be. Granted I don't think the pacing or writing of it was good but that doesn't mean I think it was bad. Rather I'd say it's underdeveloped instead. You go from being pals with Lina Navarro at the start to suddenly having her be your mortal enemy all within 20 minutes of the game and that just felt weird. They didn't give us enough time to invest into her character and give us a motive for hating her, it just felt like "lina do bad, you must go hate lina and take her down now" and that's about it.

I also think the main antagonists - The House - were left way too ambiguous. Not in a good way - they just didn't feel super significant in the grand scheme of things which is odd. Instead, what I end up remembering more about the story of Payback is probably the main trio you play as - Tyler, Mac and Jess - and the crews you take down along the way. But The House? I couldn't give two hoots about them as I played through and even after finishing them off in the last race I'm left wondering "who were they anyway?"

Where the game picks up the slack though I think is in the minor interactions & references. There were moments throughout the story where I had a giggle at some of the references to past games. I won't spoil them if you haven't seen them already yet but Payback likes to make callbacks to older NFS games and I thought that was a nice touch, even going on to answer some things about the older games. And the interactions your characters have with some of the crews you end up taking down are also entertaining, some just being smug, others feeling like the characters have a broken marriage among them where they hate each other one race and the next one they're all buddy-buddy reminiscing about their past. I found that really endearing.

Coming off of 2015's poorly-received driving model, Payback had a lot of shoes to fill. I'm very happy to report that the driving model is vastly improved over its predecessor's, making you feel like you have full control over your car...for the most part. Brake-to-drift is, once again, one of the main ways to get your car around corners, meaning it's still got that bootleg Burnout feeling to it. Admittedly it stopped bothering me after the first chapter of the game though I'm still not a huge fan of the way Need for Speed's been for the last 11+ years and sadly Payback is here to continue that trend. Despite that - the game feels great to play. Cars are fast, responsive and, baring in mind a few exceptions, I felt like I was actually in total control over my car. Getting from place to place, unlike in 2015, didn't feel like a chore and I greatly appreciate the improvements.

The one problem I have with the driving model in Payback is one of its core new introductions - off-roading. Off-roading honestly sometimes feels like the game has gone back to 2015 with cars being slippery and unresponsive. I get that it's the whole point - it's intended to be a challenge, but more often than not driving off-road meant it was time to wrestle with the game instead of actually playing it. The off-road races are going to be the closest thing to the "Tandem Drift" event from 2015 if you ever found that fun.

Improved driving model aside, there is one thing about the gameplay that I genuinely disliked and was a very common complaint throughout my playthrough - the progression system. Why oh WHY did they make the progression system based on GAMBLING?! I get it - it fits thematically with the game's lore. But is it fun to play? Hell no. GAMBLING for car upgrades is STUPID. Not being able to buy the parts you want for your build is STUPID. Having the upgrade shop be based on a timer is STUPID. The way you progress in this game is just STUPID. It is easily the worst part about the game and sours the experience for me. Sure you can earn Speed Cards by winning events, but if your car is underpowered for a specific part of the game and you wanna make it better - that's when you have to engage with this game's gambling & loot box system and it's DUMB. I genuinely hate it.

One minor comment I'm not sure whether I like or not is the lack of free roam cops. One the one hand - it makes traversing the open world to get to your next destination a lot smoother since you don't have to worry about getting randomly chased out of nowhere and the game has more than enough free roam activities to keep you busy & wandering around otherwise. On the other hand - for how involved the police is in the game's story it feels incredibly weird to leave them out of being able to chase you in free roam? Gotta take the good with the bad on this one I suppose. Personally despite how weird it is to not have them in free roam I didn't really mind all that much. The game filled in the cops' shoes well enough by giving you a huge variety of activities to partake in anyway.

Despite playing the game entirely on low settings, I think NFS Payback looks great. It's visually distinct, vivid and disregarding the desert setting the game generally looks colorful, lively and full of detail. Cars get realistically dirty & damaged the more you drive & beat them and provides you with plenty of customization options for stuff like tire smoke & nitrous.

The music I can't comment on despite having finished the game as I had the entire soundtrack disabled throughout my entire playthrough and listened to other songs while playing instead. The sound is a different story. First of all - the voice acting. Despite Jess sounding like she's bored 24/7 and Mac getting insanely annoying with how much he just can't shut up about himself, I think the voice acting in this game is pretty good. Characters under their roles sound convincing and there were definitely some moments that had me give the game a chuckle or two.

Optimization wise...well, to preface this - I streamed my entire playthrough of the game on Twitch. And let's just say that my PC isn't the most powerful thing on the planet. So I frequently encountered plenty of stutters, plenty of framedrops and even a few times when the game just unloaded & reloaded everything directly in front of my eyes. Sometimes just not loading ANYTHING at all, causing me to fall through the map! However I'm willing to chalk all that up to just the game struggling to juggle resources on my PC rather than the game itself being very poorly optimized. For the curious - my PC is an i5-4460 with a GTX 1650 and 16GB of RAM.

Also this game REQUIRES Origin. Take that as a warning - you will be forced to download and make an Origin account just to play this game. For some - this might as well be a dealbreaker.

Do I recommend NFS Payback? If you want a 10+ hour racing game with callbacks to previous games and a fun handling model, I'd say go for it. At $30 you get your money's worth. If you disliked 2015 like a lot of people did, Payback will make you appreciate the amount of improvements made to basically everything.

However if you don't like engaging with gambling to progress, I'd advise to stay away.

Big thanks to one of my Steam friends for randomly gifting this game to me a few months back! I've had my eyes on this for a while and having the pleasure of experiencing it finally was a treat. The short & simple version of this review is - I enjoyed my time with it and found great enjoyment out of it. Should you get it? If you're looking for a new challenging metroidvania platformer themed around Touhou - definitely! Full price or not - this game is worth a play.

To those who want something more detailed - read on!

Touhou Luna Nights' story is definitely leaning on the simpler side of things. It's rather straightforward and for the most part - it's out of your way during gameplay. The basic premise is interesting though, playing as Sakuya in a fake version of the Scarlet Devil Mansion made by Remilia. I appreciate it being there as something to drive the player forward and continue progressing as it gives you a clear and defined goal. The character interactions between areas are pretty entertaining, although this is one area this game falls apart in I feel - it's not very friendly with those who aren't Touhou fans with references & dialogue that will just fly over most players' heads if they aren't already acquainted with Touhou in general.

For the record it isn't a dealbreaker - you can enjoy the game just fine as is without necessarily being a Touhou fan but I just kinda wish the interactions between major characters were more...obvious to a newbie sometimes. Still, even not accounting for that - it's still entertaining stuff & easy to follow along with pacing most players will find comfortable enough.

The meat & potatoes of Touhou Luna Nights is really solid. The way this game plays is really good. There is a lot of stuff to take in and I feel as though the early-game is really tough as you need to properly adjust to all the mechanics. The main gimmick of Touhou Luna Nights is being able to stop time - early on you're given a clock & given the meter at the top of the screen you can freeze & unfreeze time as you please. That's oversimplifying it but the entire game is built around the premise of you having to either freeze or slow down time to get things going and that leads to some exhilarating puzzle-solving sometimes. Another fairly important thing you'll be doing in this game is a thing called Graze - getting close to an enemy either to restore your HP or your MP & Time Gauge. The former is for when time isn't frozen and the latter is for when time is frozen. This is one mechanic I found incredibly finicky to get working consistently unless I freeze time as it's never clear how close you are supposed to be to the enemy. Sometimes they can be social-distancing from you and you still trigger a graze, other times it feels like you have to smash your face into them to trigger it - it's incredibly inconsistent and I never really found it reliable, except during boss battles.

The difficulty of the game is something else though. I won't say it's the most difficult thing out there - quite far from it, I've certainly played harder games, but Touhou Luna Nights definitely isn't an easy game. It WILL kick your ass, especially during boss battles. I won't spoil the characters if you haven't already spoiled them for yourself, but the boss battles are going to be your true test of skill and they will lean heavily on trial & error gameplay. That's not to say the rest of the game isn't hard though - it is. There's a lot of things in the general level design that will test your ability to utilize time & general acrobatics, although this is one area I feel this game falls apart in a little bit. Sometimes you'll encounter corridors of nothing but holding either left or right and the entire room is just filled with enemies. This is particularly problematic towards the end of the game and it just feels incredibly lazy.

Control-wise I didn't really have that much of an issue playing it although having to readjust to some...interesting default controls was a little bit tough. For context - I used a PS4 controller to play this game, so for me - X was shoot, square was to stop time & circle was to jump. Pretty weird for me to adjust to given how other metroidvanias have it basically the complete opposite of that. It is possible to rebind the controls though so it's not really an issue. The controls are rock-solid despite this - they don't feel slippery or imprecise though knockback on getting hit is incredibly annoying and you'll have to be dealing with it a lot. Aside from that - they're pretty good.

The game has a very distinct pixel-art style to it and I genuinely can't get enough of it - this game looks great and nails the look flawlessly. Each environment has a satisfying amount of depth to it & the character art is also done really well. Nothing really stands out as being egregious & the animations are also really fluid. It's obvious there's been a lot of love & care put into the game's art and glancing at everything there's going to be one or two details that will stand out.

In terms of music - the game mostly has rearranges of Touhou themes & they sound great. While I can't exactly say some of the themes "fit" certain areas, I'm glad that the music filling in the explorable areas is great. It doesn't disappoint in any sense, especially the character-specific themes during boss battles. Get the soundtrack if you have the spare cash for it, it's a treat to listen to! In terms of sound design there's not a lot I can comment on. It serves its purpose and it's not terribly outstanding.

Optimization-wise this game has no issues. I haven't encountered any during my 8+ hour playthrough, even when it came to 144hz+ compatibility - the game runs absolutely flawlessly with no stutters or framerate dips or any graphical issues to speak of so it gets a solid pass from me.

I recommend Touhou Luna Nights as a purchase. For $15 you definitely get your money's worth in a fun metroidvania Touhou platformer. With a challenging difficulty curve, great music & amazing pixel art graphics Touhou Luna Nights is a game worth purchasing, despite its shortcomings with level design & finicky mechanics.

Apex Legends was the first Battle Royale game I put more than 1 hour into. Normally I don't play these types of games - they're just not something I personally enjoy all too much, but Apex Legends was different since a lot of my friends are really into this game so I was able to semi-consistently have someone to play with which is amazing. Putting in almost 20 hours, I feel confident enough to say I've formed an opinion about it, so this review is just that.

Honestly...yes. I do. I didn't expect it but I've been so far enjoying Apex Legends quite a bit. There are gripes I have with the game, but overall if someone asked me whether they should give this game a shot or not - my answer would be a solid yes. If that's enough to convince you - good, hope you go on to enjoy the game. For the rest who want to hear more - read on.

There are a lot of aspects about Apex Legends that I enjoy when talking about gameplay. So let's break them down point by point.

- Gun play
The guns in Apex are satisfying to use. Most of them have really controllable recoil and the way they sound is just incredibly satisfying. If I had to compare it to anything, oddly enough I'd choose to compare it to TF2 - the gun play is rock-solid and seeing a really solid 60 damage, for example, is enough to give you that dopamine kick that lets you say "hey I died but I had fun".
Not everything is perfect though - one of my least favorite mechanics in any first-person shooter is bullet drop-off and Apex has that. I can understand why - for the sake of balance so that someone with an SMG can't just snipe across the map, but even at mid-range it just feels clunky and annoying.
On top of that some guns just feel kind of pointless. Prime examples for me would be most Energy Weapons and most Shotguns - their fire rate is usually abysmal and and take more precision to use. While this would be good in a tactical shooter in Counter-Strike or something, in a fast-paced battle-royale like Apex I just don't think they work very well and they aren't anywhere near as appealing as a Sniper Rifle or an LMG. I now understand why there's memes about shotguns in this game being bad - it's because they just really don't fit in with the way this game wants you to play it.
To clarify - I'm not saying they're useless, I'm just saying that other options will get you results faster & more efficiently.

- Abilities
This game's abilities to a newcomer like myself are really daunting and I feel like they aren't integrated into gameplay properly. It's the one thing that I dislike about this game being that you have no idea what you're getting yourself into or what you are able to do as a new legend, making me instead play an entire game without using my ability once.
But perhaps that could be seen as a good thing, as abilities are meant to be a situational thing you can use once in a while to either escape a sticky situation or get an edge on your opponent. But this left me feeling like some legends are more useful than others. Most of the time I end up playing Bloodhound & Lifeline because they're conceptually super simple and easy to grasp, whereas characters like Wraith are difficult to understand when their abilities are applicable or not.
Overall though, I appreciate that this game doesn't make it so you need to use abilities to win but instead treats them as something you can use if you need it.

- Movement
I love this game's movement mechanics. Being based on the Source engine of all things it's no wonder this game has really satisfying movement mechanics. Moving around, flying off of a jump tower or just sliding down a slope feels really good and during fights - movement can either be the make or break of an encounter.
The only complaint in regards to movement I have concern a specific legend - Pathfinder & his standard grapple ability. Depth perception will be your worst enemy and you will be constantly fighting with the game on what is considered the appropriate distance away to initiate a grapple. Once you get the hang of it it's super satisfying but man does it feel awkward initially.

This is a free-to-play game, it's natural that it has some monetization in it so that the developers can earn money from the product they've created. The one thing that has me pretty skeptical about this game is its publisher - EA - the worst possible one. Given this fact, how's the monetization in this game? Honestly I'm incredibly mixed on it. Lemme go into detail why.

- DLC
The DLC is stupidly overpriced for what it offers & the Steam reviews reflect that. $30 to unlock every single hero is honestly a stupid price & the other DLC definitely barely offer anything worthwhile to the consumer. Honestly I'm hardly surprised that this is a thing given the publisher but it's just a shame altogether - I'd personally avoid the DLC if I were you unless it goes on a 50+% off sale at some point, if ever.

- Lootboxes
I think the lootbox system in Apex is pretty okay. I'm not condoning them being in here but their inclusion in this game is inoffensive at best. Apex Legends lootboxes offer 100% cosmetic items only of varying rarity with items ranging from crafting materials to use in the shop to weapon/character skins. From what I've gathered they don't do limited-time lootbox drops so they're avoiding making the consumer feel FOMO which is a welcome addition. In other words they're there if you want them but you can absolutely skip them if you do not with to engage with them at all and I really appreciate that.

- Battle Pass
This is one thing I actively dislike about this game's monetization system, purely because it just clickbaits you constantly with stuff like "Reach Level 25 to unlock this skin", only for you to reach Level 25 and the game tells you "buy premium to get this skin!", at which point I just wanna tell the game to ♥♥♥♥ off. The battle pass challenges themselves are fine but the rewards are underwhelming and the game keeps trying to drag you into buying the premium Battle Pass & I actively dislike that.

How are the other aspects of the game?

- Graphics
For being developed on the Source engine it surprises me how much they were able to accomplish using it. The game looks great. Not outstanding or stunning, but still visually appealing and eye-catching.
Some gripes would be that the game tends to struggle with loading graphics on time so often I found myself staring at insanely low res textures, only for them to slowly fade into the higher quality ones. It's not that big of a deal as it usually happened either during a loading screen or the character selection screen but still something I noticed regardless.

- Sound
The sound & music of Apex is good. The guns sound great & the hitsounds are perfectly satisfying.
The music isn't anything outstanding - nothing that sticks in my mind so I don't really have much to comment. Great to have in the background during non-crucial situations but definitely something you can freely mute & forget about.
The voice acting is okay. Does the job & the actors do a good job portraying the character they need to.

- Optimization
I think the game could use some work in this department. I frequently notice random frame drops & also mentioned the texture-loading thing, but as a whole - the game doesn't seem to struggle maintaining a playable framerate, it's just that it likes to dip every so often and it is annoying.

There are more things I wanna talk about but I have to cut it due to the Steam character limit. Overall, Apex Legends surprised me being that it's satisfyingly fun, looks great but the monetization system & optimization could use some work. If you were on the fence about trying it - you should try it and see if you like it.