Recent reviews by Ashe Yo Mama

I was there for Helldivers, and i'll answer the call for action for this game too.

Edit 5/6/24 12:55 EST

The Battle is won, Sony has been defeated for now. Stay vigilant Helldivers, the enemies of Democracy rarely rest for long.


Do you know what that means? it means I have killed more enemies of super earth with just about every weapon avaliable to me than the average player. I've completely filled out every warbound dropped for free within days of release. I haven't paid for a single thing in this game outside of the initial purchase. It's incredibly important that we acknowledge that every extra bit of content in this game is free and that it was done in such a way that it's not as if you have to go out of your way to do it. However, due to the changes to the PSN requirement, I have to do my duty as a helldiver and fight all enemies of super eath. Unfortunately that means I have to make this review negative.

I was unbothered personally when it was announced that psn was a requirement. I signed in with my psn account day 1 figuring that the game would have it become a requirement at some point. When this controversy broke I didn't understand the drama and thought it was all overblown. However, with a little thinking, and finding out how many people were being screwed over by this change it became clear that this must be done. I don't do this for me, I love this game, and I personally am unaffected. But for my fellow helldivers, who live far across the ocean that I play with deep into the night I stand with you. I'm an NA player who plays until the early morning hours, meaning I play with players all over the world, they are some of the best divers i've had the pleasure of fighting for democracy alongside. So I do this for them, for those who have fought for super earth, for those who had the rug pulled out from under them, for future divers all over the world. I stand with you against Sony's greed, I stand with you at the door that leads to PS+ becoming a requirement for this game. We hold the line here and stand our ground. Whether we succeed or fail it was an honor to fight by your side.



-Hell Commander of the SES Prophet of Midnight

You'd be surprised how quickly it turns from "Haha, it's the silly little incest game I heard about that i'm playing for the bit!" To "These two are so indescribably messed up it's like watching a 40 car pile up in slow motion and I can't look away and I want to know more." This game has completely dug its talon's into my brain for the past week and am looking forward to the subsequent releases and ending to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up story.

Edit multiple years later.

I came back to this game just because I wanted to give it another chance, I assumed that a lot of the issues I had problems with then would have been addressed in some way, instead this game found new ways to disappoint me. I'm not sure if they did something to the physics or if it was always like this but it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ near impossible to stay on the road sometimes. You'll just be cruising down a straight doing minor adjustments to avoid traffic and you'll hit invisible speed bumps which lifts the car juuuuuuuuust enough for the wheels to lose contact with the pavement causing the car to freak out when it makes contact again. There's just a ton of small design choices that grate over time. The entire game is a slog, the story feels like it should be satire but I think it actually believes its own ♥♥♥♥. Like how in the ever loving god does anyone with the ability to self reflect would come to the decision that street racers causing hundreds in property damage are somehow a "marginalized community" that the "fascist police" are trying to crush because we're so special and different. I have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea who this game is for or what they were smoking when they wrote this up, but this ♥♥♥♥ is a corporate checklist of buzzwords and trends. Any charm this game could have had is BURIED by terrible design choices that aren't readily apparent. This game is held together with the tears of burnt out over worked devs and corporate share-holders that only invested because NFS used to make money because their games were handcrafted experiences made to be fun. Now it's just another call of duty or any number of sports games that have been yearly released for over two decades. I can't stress how incredibly mid this game is in almost every aspect that makes a game fun.




This is the first time I've ever quit a NFS game mid way through. Game has too many glaring problems for me to ignore/bash my head against.

Here are some of the positives.

-Fun Visual Effects
Forgot I wasn't playing something like Underground 2 for the first couple of hours, the stylistic choices fit right in.

-Under Rated Cars Available
Eclipse GSX gang rise up.

That's it.

Her's a list of all of the problems i've had.

-Cops
Heat level 1-4 is a joke to outrun most of the time, hardly a threat. Heat level 5 though? I hope you enjoy wasting 20 minutes trying to get from your last race to another one, because every Heat 5 police car has ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spider sense and will be on your ass the moment your tailight is in the corner of their view cone. It has some of the chaos and feel of the OG most wanted, but with ZERO tools to deal with how many cops are going to be shoved up your ass. Later on you can purchase "Upgrades" to make the police more tolerable. Newsflash: If you have to put a passive ability just to tone down how obnoxious cops are, you're doing something wrong.

-Rating System
Do you remember the days where you unlocked stuff as you went along a tiering system? Unlock a part, equip a part, next race. Simple. Do you also remember when you maxed out your parts for the current tier and your opponents upgraded with you? Not anymore. Now you gotta carefully pick and choose what parts to by because LOOK OUT one point too high and you're no longer able to race in that tier. Well that's ok, at least you can race in the new tier you're in right? Wrong again. If you try and take a car just in the threshold of a tier, or even half of it, you're going to get your ass smoked because the ai always has the top 3 cars edging to the next tier. Best part too is that number means absolutely nothing!! The difference between a 268 S+ 1969 Boss Mustang and every super car made in the last ten years is so staggering that you have barely any chance of winning for some reason. The rating system is a lie and has no place in a need for speed game. I'd go play forza if I wanted to super tune my ride, and at least there I know a topped out car for the rank can compete against other topped out cars.

-Ai racers
They're all magically faster than you even when you have the same rated car.

-NOS
Super unimpactful, the new boost NOS mechanic has more impact and is just mario kart's drifting bonus boost mechanic.

-Restarts
Did you crash your car due to the AI? Did a cop brake check you causing you to lose a race? Well eat a bag of ♥♥♥♥♥ because someone decided restarts are now a limited resource! So now when you inevitably mess up once, or have random factors mess with your race you're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ because the rubber banding on the AI only works one way!

-Checkpoints
Too small in a lot of instances, stupidly easy to be bounced out of it, and due to factors stated above ♥♥♥♥♥ your entire race.

In closing, this is the worst need for speed i've played in nearly 20 years. Even Payback's stupid rng upgrade system was less frustrating than the culmination of mistakes made in this singular game. Someone really looked at all of these timee wasting mechanics and said "Yeah, this'll be great." Just a shame that somebody wasted money getting this for me for christmas.

To preface this review, I've played around 140-150 hours since the release of Sunbreak.

Monster Hunter Sunbreak addresses many of the criticisms of Rise by upping the difficulty and removing features like the rampage. While the removal of said content may be seen as a negative, it's an entirely subjective opinion based on whether or not you liked that content to begin with. I personally was indifferent to it, and won't be missing it either way. The jump from High rank to Master rank is about what you'd expect if you played Iceborne at launch. Your High rank armor can take you deeper into Sunbreaks dependent on your ability as a hunter, but eventually you will need to upgrade for endgame. I found around MR 3 that hunts were becoming too close for comfort with my high rank armor and upgraded myself.

Monsters are faster, more aggressive, and some have new moves designed to punish players from wirefalling without thinking. Every monster in Rise has been brought up, polished and adjusted. The newcomers and returning monsters fit right in, though the three new monsters, including the flagship are a highlight. Combat is face paced and engaging to a point. As your skill as a hunter increases and you learn a monsters fight patterns you'll find yourself able to relax more. If this is your second monster hunter game as it was for me, the returning monsters from older entries will surprise you and possibly cart you if you're not on top of your game. I honestly found myself very surprised at how often I was carting, usually once a hunt past MR 3, though I played the entirety of the games story solo. Hunts are much easier online, having the monsters attention split between 8 different entities. If you're struggling I'd recommend send a join request on your hunts.

Weapon designs are on point, with the odd bland MH:World design here and there. Armor sets are well themed and cool, layered armor is a god send due to this. The only real complaint I have is that I wish layered weapons returned, it would be nice to use some of the other designs for weapons. The Almudron switch axe being one that I have a personal distaste for and wish to replace the design with something else.

If you got hooked on monster hunter for the gameplay loop of hunt monster > make gear > repeat then this will be no different. With free updates on there way with new monsters, this game will boast hundreds of hours of content by the end of its life cycle, much like Iceborne does now. I only hope that we get content such as the Safi raid, Kulve tarroth, or Alatreon near the end of the games life cycle.

At present the endgame consists of fighting afflicted monsters, which are essentially just tempered monsters with an added dps check mechanic. They are the only way to get certain materials for rarity 10 weapons, certain decorations and master rank layered armor tickets. They are faster, more aggressive, and hit harder. At current the rewards for beating these monsters feel underwhelming, I hope this mechanic is expanded on with future updates, adding more monster variety, and hopefully elder dragons for some sort of worthwhile reward such as the AT sets of world.

I give monster hunter sunbreak in its current state a 8/10. There's room for improvement but it's really solid.