52 Games. 1 Year. 2020.

1. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS4) | 6th Jan - 12hrs | 4/5
2. Borderlands 3 (PS4) | 16th Jan - 32 hours | 4/5
3. Resident Evil 0 (PS4) | 19th Jan - 8 hours | 3/5
4. Yoku's Island Express (PS4) | 25th Jan - 5 hours | 4.5/5

Ciri was a Witcher, Radovik was dead, Temeria was a vassal state and Geralt and Yenn retired peacefully. I was pretty happy with this ending.

1. What Remains of Edith Finch - January 24th
2. Need For Speed Heat - February 22nd
3. Untitled Goose Game | February 26th
4. Doom 2016 | February 28th
5. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order | March 9th
6. Overcooked | March 22nd
7. Doom Eternal | March 24th
8. HITMAN | March 25th
9. Control: The Foundation DLC | March 27th
10. Unravel TWO | April 3rd
11. Resident Evil 3: Remake | April 7th
12. God of War | April 19th
13. Streets of Rage 4 | May 2nd
14. GRIS | May 11th
15. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
16. Final Fantasy VII Remake | May 25th
17. Blood & Truth | June 1st
18. Borderlands 3 | June 2nd
19. Mafia II: Definitive Edition | June 15th
19. The Last of Us Remastered | June 18th
20. The Last of Us Remastered: Left Behind | June 19th
21. The Last of Us Part II | June 27th
22. Ghost of Tsushima | August 8th
23. Death Stranding | August 23rd
24. Control | August 26th
25. Control: AWE | August 30th
26. Cuphead | September 9th
27. Fall Guys | September 23rd
28. WWE 2K Battlegrounds | September 29th
29. Deadpool | October 3rd
30. The Wolf Among Us | October 12th
31. Destiny 2
32. Stories: The Path of Destinies | October 14th
33. Ghost of Tsushima: Legends | October 21st
34. The Playroom VR | October 25th
35. Statik | October 26th
36. Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality | October 27th
37. Robinson: The Journey | October 29th
38. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality | November 1st
39. Here They Lie | November 3rd
40. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission | November 4th
41. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales | November 13th
42. Carrion | November 15th
43. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition | November 20th
44. Black | November 23rd
45. Astro's Playroom | November 27th
46. Bugsnax | November | 28th
47. Gears 2 | December 4th
48. Crackdown | December 7th
49. inFAMOUS Second Son | December 10th
50. Call of the Sea | December 14th
51. Crackdown 2 | December 18th
52. Sunset Overdrive | December 27th


Not-so-honorable-mention: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | March something - fuck this game.

January
1. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PS4) | 01/04/2020 | 2 hours | 4.5/5
2. Life is Strange 2 (PS4) | 01/10/2020 | 12 hours | 4/5
3. Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4) | 01/10/2020 | 1 hour | 4/5

1. Resident Evil 2 Remake (PS4) | 4th Jan - 8 hrs | 4.5/5
2. Cadence of Hyrule (Switch) | 5th Jan - 5 hrs | 3.5/5
3. Super Smash Brothers Ultimate: World of Light (Switch) | 18th Jan - 20 hrs | 2.5/5
4. Kingdom Hearts III: ReMind (PS4) | 26th Jan - 5 hrs | 2/5
5. Puzzles and Dragons Gold (Switch) | 6th Feb - 3 hrs | 1/5
6. Chrono Trigger (Vita) | 15th Feb - 20 hrs | 5/5
7. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (Switch) | 15th Feb - 7 hrs | 4/5
8. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (Switch) | 19th Feb - 5 hrs | 4.5/5
9. Wandersong (Switch) | 20th Feb - 6 hrs | 4/5
10. Doom '93 (PS4) | 22nd Feb - 5 hrs | 4/5
11. Vanquish (PS4) | 23rd Feb - 5 hrs | 4.5/5
12. Katana Zero (Switch) | 25th Feb - 4 hrs | 4.5/5
13. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Switch) | 11th March - 2 hrs | 2.5/5
14. Minit (PC) | 12th March - 2 hrs | 2.5/5
15. The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone (PS4) | 13th March - 10 hrs | 4.5/5
16. A Short Hike (PC) | 14th March - 1 hr | 4/5
17. The Witcher 3 (PS4) | 21st March - 42 hrs | 4.5/5
18. ARMS (Switch) | 3rd April - 3 hrs | 2/5
19. The Messenger (PC) | 8th April - 10 hrs | 4.5/5
20. Doom Eternal (PS4) | 12th April - 15 hrs | 5/5
21. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) | 13th April - 45 hrs | 4/5
22. Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4) | 23rd April - 40+ hrs | 5/5
23. Slay the Spire (PS4) | 23rd April - 35+ hrs | 5/5
24. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Switch) | 3rd May - 12 hrs | 4/5
25. Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4) | 5th May - 10 hrs | 3.5/5
26. The Outer Worlds (PS4) | 13th May - 20 hrs | 4/5
27. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (PS4) | 20th May - 16 hrs | 5/5
28. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna the Golden Country (Switch) | 22nd May - 20 hrs | 3.5/5
29. Helltaker (PC) | 28th May - 1 hr | 3/5
30. Super Mario RPG (SNES Mini) | 7th June - 15 hrs | 4/5
31. Griftlands (PC) | 7th June - 8+ hrs | 3.5/5
32. What Remains of Edith Finch (PS4) | 8th June - 2 hrs | 4/5
33. Monster Train (PC) | 9th June - 5+ hrs | 4.5/5
34. The Last of Us (PS4) | 13th June - 13 hrs | 3.5/5
35. The Last of Us - Left Behind (PS4) | 13th June - 3 hrs | 3/5
36. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (PS4) | 15th June - 36 hrs | 4.5/5
37. Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4) | 27th June - 9 hrs | 4/5
38. Portal (PC) 28th June - 3 hrs | 3.5/5
39. Crash Bandicoot Remastered (PS4) 28th June - ~8 hrs | 3/5
40. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor (Switch) 2nd July - 30+ hrs | 4/5
41. Nex Machina (PS4) 5th July - 2+ hrs | 4.5/5
42. Devil May Cry V (PS4) 6th July - 15 hrs | 5/5
43. River City Girls (PS4) 8th July - 7 hrs | 4/5
44. Uncharted 4 (PS4) 14th July - 14 hrs | 4/5
45. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Switch) 22nd July - 7 hrs | 4/5
46. Transistor (PS4) 28th July - 6 hrs | 4.5/5
47. The Last of Us: Part II (PS4) 8th August - 25 hrs | 4.5/5
48. Halo CE Anniversary (PC) 12th August - 11 hrs | 3.5/5
49. Resogun (PS4) 13th August - 3 hrs | 4/5
50. Crosscode (PS4) 29th August - 39 hrs | 4.5/5
51. Danganronpa: Trigger-Happy Havoc (Vita) 30th August - 20 hrs | 4/5
52. Super Mario Bros. Super Mario All-Stars ver. (Switch) 4th September - 2 hrs | 3.5/5
53. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back Remastered (PS4) 6th September - 6 hrs | 3/5
54. Paper Mario and the Origami King (Switch) 8th September - 25 hrs | 4/5
55. Donut County (Switch) 12th September - 2 hrs | 2.5/5
56. Hades (Switch) 27th September - 50 hrs | 5/5
57. Pokemon Sword: The Crown Tundra (Switch) 1st November - 20 hrs | 4.5/5
58. Crash: Warped Remastered (PS4) 4th November - 6 hrs | 3.5/5
59. Mario 64 Remastered (Switch) 11th November - 10 hrs | 4/5
60. Crash 4: It's About Time (PS4) 13th November - 8 hrs | 3.5/5
61. The Solitaire Conspiracy (PC) 21st November - 3 hrs | 2.5/5
62. Cyberpunk 2077 (PS4) 30th December - 40 hrs | 3.5/5
63. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch) 31st December - 27 hrs | 3/5

04/01 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
12/01 - killer7
12/01 - Ape Out
14/01 - A Short Hike
16/01 - Katana ZERO
28/01 - Pokemon Shield
29/01 - Sayonara Wild Hearts
31/01 - Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
31/01 - Minit
02/02 - Control
05/02 - Sky Force Anniversary
05/02 - Kentucky Route Zero
06/02 - Wattam
09/02 - DOOM (2016)
16/02 - Florence
16/02 - Batman: Arkham VR
17/02 - Where the Goats Are
19/02 - Final Fantasy VII
22/02 - Sonic Mania
24/02 - Sonic Forces
26/02 - Can Androids Pray
27/02 - Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
07/03 - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
08/03 - Black Mesa
10/03 - Half-Life: Opposing Force
12/03 - Half-Life: Blue Shift
13/03 - D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
17/03 - Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame
18/03 - Half-Life 2
19/03 - Half-Life 2: Episode One
24/03 - Half-Life 2: Episode Two
30/03 - Control: The Foundation
07/04 - Journey to the Savage Planet
07/04 - 198X
10/04 - Half-Life: Alyx
18/04 - The Warriors
19/04 - Journey to the Savage Planet: Hot Garbage
24/04 - Animal Crossing: New Horizons
25/04 - Final Fantasy VII Remake
28/04 - Cloudpunk
28/04 - Kingdom Hearts III
30/04 - Kingdom Hearts II Re:Mind
12/05 - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
17/05 - Dead Space
19/05 - Dead Space: Extraction
19/05 - Dead Space: Ignition
22/05 - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2
23/05 - Jackass: The Game
25/05 - Maneater
29/05 - Minecraft Dungeons
31/05 - Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
03/06 - Dead Space 2
05/06 - Sludge Life
08/06 - Parasite Eve
09/06 - Panzer Dragoon
13/06 - Panzer Dragoon II Zwei
15/06 - Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
19/06 - Mario Tennis Aces
22/06 - Ratchet & Clank
27/06 - Star Wars Episode I: Racer
27/06 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
28/06 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider
02/07 - Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
08/07 - Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
10/07 - Ratchet: Deadlocked
13/07 - Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
25/07 - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
26/07 - SUPERHOT
29/07 - Streets of Rage 4
31/07 - Ghost of Tsushima
31/07 - Secret Agent Clank
01/08 - Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
04/08 - Gears 5
06/08 - The Touryst
08/08 - Yakuza: Dead Souls
13/08 - Batman: The Telltale Series
01/09 - Control: AWE

This year I'm making a concerted effort to try and finish every game I start, unless I am just *really* not enjoying it. So I'll keep a log of those games too and why I gave up on them.

A01. Children of Morta | PC

I started this after hearing a lot of positive word of mouth and, even though I bounced off of it, I understand *why* that word of mouth exists. The pixel art is really beautiful and the combat is fun enough but, after playing through the first world, I just didn't have it in me to continue on through all of the rest. It was fun but the hour or so I played of it was enough and I just had no real desire to play any more.

A02. The Outer Worlds | PC

I played about 20 hours of this game before eventually giving up on it. I tried so many times to just grit my teeth and get through it, but it was just so aggressively boring that I couldn't do it. I was really looking forward to this game and started it on the day that it launched and thought that it was going to be a game that I loved that I spent a long time with. It has such a strong first impression that I never would have imagined that I just wouldn't be able to even come close to finishing it. It felt like after I exhaustively covered the opening world I had seen everything I needed to see. And, maybe worse of all, it felt as though I had heard everything the game had to say. I just think that the writing is bland to actively bad and, once you get over the whimsical hyper-capitalist version of it's future (which, in itself, is kind of rote at this point) I just don't think the game really has anything to offer. Say whatever you want about the Bethesda Fallout games but I would happily return to any of those before I played this game again.

A03. Parasite Eve II | Playstation (Retroarch - Beetle PSX HW Core)

I played the first Parasite Eve for the first time this year and it immediately became one of my all-time favourite games. So, as soon as I was done with the first, I almost immediately jumped into the second game. Maybe my biggest mistake was jumping into it blind. I had no idea that the control and combat was changed so radically and it was just instantly off putting. But, through playing more of it, I kind of tried to accept the game on its own terms and not hold it against it's predecessor. There were things that I really liked about it. The location change was refreshing and playing through the abandoned gas station and hotel level in the day time was a novel experience. I played through to the end of the first disc and just realised that, for as much as I enjoyed aspect of the game, I just really hated the part where you actually played it. Even if you remove the fact that it abandoned the fun and unique combat of the original game to try to chase the Resident Evil survival horror dragon, looking that this game's movement and combat in a vacuum it's just not fun. It's stiff and awkward and frustrating in ways that never felt rewarding. The whiplash of going from one of my new favourite games to not even being able to finish its direct sequel was just kind of a bummer.

A04. Dead Space 3 | PC

I played through all of the other Dead Space games this year. I had played through 1 and 2 previously, but it was my first time playing through Extraction, Ignition, and 3. I got about 2 hours into 3. I hit the beginning of Chapter 6 and, after receiving a text log, I opened the log menu and saw that the total amount of chapters was listed at the top. I was at Chapter 6 of... 19. The idea of having to fight myself through another ten or so hours of the tedium of Dead Space 3 immediately repelled me and I quit the game and uninstalled it. It's just not at all fun. I find it difficult to really explain why I think the first Dead Space is an incredible game and Dead Space 3, which on it's surface seems like more of the same if a little less polished, is so repugnant to me, but it is. the combat is less fun, shooting enemies is less responsive and satisfying, the story is just a convoluted mess and Isaac is a cartoon caricature of his former self. The steady decline in quality in games of this series just falls off of a cliff and I'm kind of glad that this franchise isn't still limping along.

01. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | PC | Completed 04/01/2020 | ★★★★

Notoriously finished this using an easy mode mod and had fun like a true godless idiot

02. killer7 | PC | Completed 12/01/2020 | ★★★★★

I had never played killer7 before and it... rules? It took me a long time to get my head around the gameplay loop but once I did, I had a really good time

03. Ape Out | PC | Completed 12/01/2020 | ★★★

It was alright. I completely understand why people are so high on this game but I don't really have the desire to go back and replay it on hard or anything. The art style and music go a long, long way to the experience (even more so than Hotline Miami imo). I'm glad I played it but it doesn't really move me one way or the other

04. A Short Hike | PC | Completed 14/01/2020 | ★★★

I got about forty-five minutes to an hour in poking around at all of the stuff to do before I was like "fuck it, I'm just gonna get to the top of this mountain". This was on a lot of people's best of lists last year and I get it, I just wasn't really in the mood to wring as much out of it as I probably should. I love the art style and it controls really well and is tonally extremely chill, but it didn't really stick with me the way it did with others.

05. Katana ZERO | PC | Completed 16/01/2020 | ★★★★

I *Ioved* this game. The only thing I really knew about it before I played it was that it was a side-scrolling action game and that it was really good. I didn't know anything about the mechanics, which were really fun, and I definitely had no idea there was such a strong emphasis on story. The way the story was presented was just... it's so good. This game is so good. On its face it just seems like a cyberpunk ninja game or whatever but I really enjoyed the world building and just the shitty, awful characters that were juxtaposed with the sweetest relationship development with a kid in your apartment building. I can't say enough good things about this game, it's very, very good.

06. Pokemon Shield | Nintendo Switch | Completed 28/01/2020 | ★★★

This is the first Pokemon game I've finished in easily over a decade and it was... fine? Even though it wasn't the evolution people hoped it'd be moving to a console getting to play the new Pokemon game on a TV really kept me engaged. Just something about handhelds keep me from ever finishing games on them. I liked the structure of the world and thought the wild area was a fun idea that they continue to expand moving forward. I just really, really don't need every Pokemon game to be about some world ending even brought on by a legendary Pokemon or whatever. It's so boring. I really appreciated how for the majority of the game the bigger story stuff just kinda happened around you while people kept telling you to focus on the gym challenge, but then the end of the game just drags you right into it and it felt like I was just slogging through *hours* of boring story stuff I didn't care about at all that soured the whole experience for me.

Also Sobble's evolutions suck so hard and I really regret not googling them before hand and being stuck with this goofy looking stupid idiots.

07. Sayonara Wild Hearts | iOS | Completed 29/01/2020 | ★★★

This is my second time playing this game after playing it last year when it came out on the Switch. For whatever reason I just can't get this game to click with me the way it probably should. I just get way too wrapped up every time in getting gold rank and all of the diamond things in the opening levels before remembering it doesn't really have to be like that. My ideal version of this game is where, the first time you play, it's just like album arcade mode where the whole story happens to you all at once, but *without* the scoring so you can just experience the story and then unlocking ranked mode after that. I understand why they wouldn't design the game that way, but it would do a lot for me personally to just get the idea of scores out of my head and allow me to focus on the experience which, when I was eventually able to let those gameplay hangups go, is still incredibly moving and good

08. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot | PC | Completed 31/01/2020 | ★★★★

I was so up and down on my opinions on this game while playing it that I never would have thought my views would be so positive when I was done with it. It's far from perfect and has a lot of issues in how it plays and how it delivers the story, but you can just tell this game was made by people who genuinely care about and/or respect the source material and wanted to present the story in its entirety (and then some) in the best way possible. As an action game on its own it's probably lacking pretty heavily, but as a Dragon Ball product for Dragon Ball fans I think it's very good and totally worth playing

09. Minit | PC | Completed 31/01/2020 | ★★

I like the concept of this game and think it executes on it pretty well, I just felt like it kinda... ended? It seemed like there was going to be a lot more to it than there really was. There's a lot of secrets and coins that I didn't find but I didn't really feel incentivised to find them outside of just filling a percentage meter. I get why people were super into it when it came out but once you get past the cool concept of the time loop and see the tone for its charming world it wears a little thin

10. Control | PC | Completed 02/02/2020 | ★★★★★

I love this game. Remedy are easily my favourite developers and this is one of the best games they've ever made. I kind of had an inconsistent time with it because I started it when it was released but my video card died half way through and I had to wait like a month until my PC was returned with it repaired, so by the time I got it back I thought I should just restart the game from the beginning and redoing a lot of it kinda hurt my momentum. But, despite that, it's fantastic. I think I'll like it even more when I do my inevitable replay.

11. Sky Force Anniversary | PC | Completed 05/02/2020 | ★★★

I'm not really that experienced with SHMUPs, and especially not bullet hell SHMUPs, so the rouge-lite element of this was really essential to me sticking with it. It was pretty fun, but the environments got really repetitive and the challenges basically being the same for every single level was pretty boring and didn't cause me to play any differently. I was hoping this would be the game to ease me into the SHMUP genre because I would really like to play more, but I'm not sure if I want to play the sequel or just go and try to find my way in with another series.

12. Kentucky Route Zero | PC | Completed 05/02/2020 | ★★★★★

It's a perfect game.

I played through acts I to IV when IV was release and loved it a lot then, but getting to play the entirety of it now with the interludes built in is just an amazing experience. I can't think of a single way this game could be improved.

13. Wattam | PC | Completed 06/02/2020 | ★★★★

I really didn't expect the story of Wattam to connect with me as much as it did. The game was always surprising and goof and fun, but I got genuinely invested in this silly world and found the ending to be weirdly touching. I loved this little square man and all of his friends who want nothing more than for him to take off his hat so they can all explode together as friends forever.

14. DOOM (2016) | PC | Completed 09/02/2020 | ★★★★

This was just a quick replay to get ready for DOOM Eternal next month. I hadn't played through it completely since it was released and it still holds up incredibly well. Maybe the only thing I have to say negative about DOOM in 2020 is that, if you've played it before, it's really hard to recapture that raw excitement and energy that it has the first time. Playing this game in 2016 I remember it being frantic and exciting and explosive from basically the beginning to end but, now that I know how everything works and just the general flow of the game, it feels a lot more mechanical. It's still very, very fun and I hope that Eternal can recapture some of that energy just by the virtue of it being a new experience.

15. Florence | PC | Completed 16/02/2020 | ★★★★★

Florence is my all-time favourite mobile game, so purchasing and playing it again on the PC was really a no-brainer. It's a little bit more clunky with a controller because the game is obviously built around a touchscreen, but it's still one of the best, most personal video game stories I've ever played. Also, it's set where I live so it's fun to see landmarks that I see all of the time show up in a video game. Florence is great, everyone should play it.

16. Batman: Arkham VR | PC | Completed 16/02/2020 | ★

Last year I played through the Arkham games again but I didn't have a VR headset at the time and was frustrated that I missed out on this but, after playing it, that frustration was kind of misplaced. This game just isn't that fun. It's cool to see the familiar Arkham world and characters in VR, but the way you interact with that world is so boring. It ends with a prolonged impossible space hallucination bit that you can see what it's trying to do immediately and goes on for way too long despite the game only lasting like an hour. I got this heavily discounted and I still feel pretty burned, but if I had paid the full retail price for it, I would be pretty upset with it. It's just not good.

17. Where the Goats Are | PC | Completed 17/02/2020 | ★★★

This is sort of a prequel/proof of concept to The Stillness of the Wind which is a game I've been meaning to play for a long time but just haven't. You just spend a stretch of days on your isolated goat farm doing daily activities until you reach the end. It's calm and meditative and ultimately very sad in all of the ways you think it's going to be the second you start it. I liked it but I don't think it's really going to stick with me and in a weird way it made me feel less excited to jump into The Stillness of the Wind even though it's undoubtedly a lot better

18. Final Fantasy VII | PC | Completed 19/02/2020 | ★★★★★

I thought I would just quickly blast through this before the remake comes out to refresh myself on it but I kind fell deeper into this world than I thought I would. The original Final Fantasy VII absolutely holds up, it's a good game. It's ugly in the way a lot of early polygonal games were and there are some mini-games that feel almost broken, but the core of this game, the world, the characters, the story, and the turn-based combat are all still very, *very* good. Before playing this I felt I had a solid grasp on what the main story beats of Final Fantasy VII were despite not finishing it since about 1999/2000, but I was surprised both by how clear my memory of it really was, and how much of the pacing and structure of the game I had forgotten. I know that seems contradictory, but there are scenes that I can vividly recall in my memory that played out the exact same way re-playing it. Just moments like approaching Hojo in Midgar at the end of Disc 2 is seared onto my brain. But then there were other things like the length of the first disc that really took me by surprise. So much of the back half of that disc (Rocket Town, Cosmo Canyon, even Mt Corel) felt like they first showed up way later.

Anyway it's still an incredible game and, even though it's one of the games I'm the most nostalgic for, I do think that it's perfectly accessible and fun to play today for people who have never touched it before.

19. Sonic Mania | PC | Completed 22/02/2020 | ★★★

I have a lot of nostalgia for 2D Sonic. The Mega Drive was the first console I ever had and it came packed in with Sonic 2 and I played *a lot* of it growing up. Sonic Mania hits a lot of those pleasure centres for me, but I found a lot of the new additions to the formula to be either boring or outright bad. The frustration of the gravity balls or whatever they are was enough to sour me on a lot of the good in this game. I'm glad it exists and I can understand why people are so high on it, but there were enough frustrating elements for it to be just A Good Sonic, which is still a pretty big achievement. It's still pretty shocking a sequel to this hasn't been announced yet and I really hope they're working on it

20. Sonic Forces | PC | Completed 24/02/2020 | ★★★

Look. I understand this game isn't that good. I get it. It's pretty janky. It's *very* short and super easy. It's also kind of ugly, with some of the pre-rendered cutscenes looking like they are from Sonic Heroes or something. BUT I have a huge soft spot for it that I can't really explain. The tone of the story of this game is so bonkers, with Sonic being a POW who is continually tortured for *six months*. That alone makes this game so weird and interesting that it's enough for me to like it. Them leveraging the fact that people have been making Sonic OC's for decades is really smart and I'm surprised it took them this long, but the actual creation tools are pretty limited and every created character sort of ends up looking the same. I can't really articulate *why* I like this game so much, especially after I bounced off of Generations pretty hard the last time I played it, but I like it! Sometimes bad things are just good and I think this is good! Sue me!!

21. Can Androids Pray | PC | Completed 26/02/2020 | ★★★

This is a short visual novel (it describes itself as sitcom length) about two people in crashed mechs talking about the nature of life and death as they countdown the hours until they die. It's interesting and well written with some really good music. It's a cool experience, but maybe not one that is really going to stick with me. It's nice and sweet and you can tell the other person to fuck off a bunch if you want to.

22. Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 27/02/2020 | ★

I've heard people say this game was bad since it was released and I always just assumed that they meant it was bad to play or whatever but, oh boy, this game fucking sucks! The story and tone of this game is so, so awful that it truly made me mad while playing it. I checked out pretty early in the story because it's just such nonsense. It's nonsense in a vacuum but, in the context of it being a follow up to Final Fantasy VII and existing in that same world with those same characters? It's just awful. Some of the cutscenes in this game felt like they rivalled Death Stranding in length and tedium. I would have skipped them but it was occasionally fun to see the backgrounds and locations rendered much, much higher than they ever were in the original Final Fantasy VII. Getting to revisit Kalm and Shinra Mansion was novel and fun, but really that's the only positive thing I can say about this game. It's just dismal in every sense of the word. Easily the worst game I've played so far this year.

23. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII | Playstation Portable (PPSSPP) | Completed 08/03/2020 | ★★★★★

I love this game so much. The way that it enhances on the original story of Final Fantasy VII and expands on Zack, Sephiroth, and Cloud's relationship is fantastic. Watching Sephiroth's decent from loyal Shinra employee and model SOLIDER member to just an unhinged lunatic feels really consistent and satisfying even though you know how his story finishes before you even start the game. There is some so stupid stuff in here that a lot of prequels do that I *hate*, where they try to get too cute and tie everything together. Zack's relationship with Aerith is the best example of this, where it's revealed that not only was Zack the person who gave her the idea to start selling flowers, but he was the one that bought her her Iconic Hair Ribbon Thing. It's just too much for no real reason than to have Aerith be a part of the plot which, like, I get why they would want to do it, I just don't think they needed to.

I think the ending of this game is still genuinely moving and sad and, playing this pretty fresh off of Final Fantasy VII, I was surprised by how much it touched me. It's a shame that this game is stuck on the PSP because it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Once you get accustomed to it's unique (if kind of too easy and one note) combat system it's an amazing Final Fantasy experience. If you have the capacity to play this on the PSP (or via emulation) I really can't recommend it enough. Replaying it all of these years later has really established it as one of my all-time favourite games.

24. Black Mesa | PC | Completed 08/03/2020 | ★★★★

I've tried a few times over the past few years to play the original Half-Life but, for whatever reason, I always bounce off of it after an hour or so. Black Mesa updates the game to modern standards while making a lot of the parts that people complained about the original significantly better. It feels weird that, after hearing people complain about Xen for *decades*, to come out of Black Mesa with it easily being my favourite part of the game. If anyone was to play Half-Life for the first time, I really don't understand why you wouldn't play Black Mesa, it's very good.

25. Half-Life: Opposing Force | PC | Completed 10/03/2020 | ★★★★

Going from Black Mesa to this was pretty jarring but it really is a testament to how the original games hold up. Black Mesa was the perfect way for me to get into the series and going back to these older expansions didn't feel as overwhelming as starting here to begin with. I'm a sucker for expansions and spin offs that take place at the same time as the original fiction, and Opposing Force does it really well. A game where you're kind of the antagonist but just a grunt stuck between relatively innocent people and more antagonistic forces is a really interesting idea.

26. Half-Life: Blue Shift | PC | Completed 12/03/2020 | ★★★

Blue Shift is another Half-Life expansion that occurs concurrently with the events of the original and, while it was still fun, it felt a bit redundant playing it right after Opposing Force. The core of the game is still very good, but it just feels like the went back to the well one too many times, especially when you consider that Opposing Force added new enemy and weapon types to at least feel a little different, while Blue Shift doesn't add anything and removes everything new that came with Opposing Force. It's a lot shorter and just feels lesser in every way.

27. D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die | PC | Completed 13/03/2020 | ★★

It seems weird to be able to judge this fairly. Like it's a game designed specifically for the Kinect that was planned to have multiple seasons but only had one that ended on a cliff-hanger. I like the idea and I enjoy Swery's method of storytelling, but I was never fully able to let myself get fully onboard with this knowing that there wasn't going to be a conclusion (though there is a possibility that there will be one in Deadly Premonition 2 which is weird and exciting). The gameplay doesn't really hold up in a non-Kinect setting and is just kind of tedious. It has fun characters and such potential in its storytelling but it feels a lot more like a proof of concept than an actual game.

28. Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame | PC | Completed 17/03/2020 | ★★

For an official Supercross game I was expecting it to have deeper systems and a more fulfilling career mode but this was still okay. Everything is just passable if underwhelming. There are times when the racing physics feel really weird, even when changed to normal from the default assisted, and things like scrubbing and drifting just don't feel intuitive or satisfying. I can't tell if I'm underwhelmed or impressed by this game considering I didn't really have high expectations for MONSTER ENERGY THE OFFICIAL VIDEOGAME. It's serviceable and if you were a big Supercross fan I'm sure it would tick enough boxes to be worth it

29. Half-Life 2 | PC | Completed 18/03/2020 | ★★★★★

It feels very weird and stupid to be like 'hey did you guys know that Half-Life 2 is good?' in the year of our lord 2020 but, like, did you guys know that Half-Life 2 is really good? I spent the entire time playing it just blown away by how well it holds up. It looks a little dated (especially in the character models, which is funny when you consider G-man's face being like the big reveal for this game), but the art style still looks so good and it carries it a long way. But the thing that is so, so impressive is how well the gameplay holds up. Nothing about playing this game really feels dated, it's so fresh and fun and executes on every idea it has almost perfectly. If Half-Life 2 never existed and this exact campaign came out like a year ago, I think it would still be an incredibly well-regarded first-person shooter. It's just good in an almost timeless way that very few games from *2004* are. Like there are a lot of games from 2014 that don't hold up as well has Half-Life 2 does. It's just phenomenal.

I also played Lost Coast which was fine. It's cool that it exists in a standalone form but it also makes sense as to why it was cut. I wish that other companies leveraged cut content in this way, though, because it's really neat to be able to see it.

30. Half-Life 2: Episode One | PC | Completed 19/03/2020 | ★★★★

This is the fifth Half-Life game that I've played in the last month and it's where the fatigue has started to set in. I really enjoyed the first hour or so of Episode One where you are just in the Citadel and only have the Gravity Gun and it's alternating between normal gravity and the super version, but once you get out of the Citadel and start getting guns and weapons and stuff it started to feel like a bit of a grind. It's still a very good game but, especially coming right off of Half-Life 2, it doesn't really do anything to differentiate itself at all and just feels like a lot more of the same.

31. Half-Life 2: Episode Two | PC | Completed 24/03/2020 | ★★★★

Damn they really just did leave it like that.

32. Control: The Foundation | PC | Completed 30/03/2020 | ★★★

I thought this DLC was going to expand on the lore of the Oldest House more than it actually did. The backstory on the Bureau from the 60's and the house's foundation was interesting, but nothing really came close to be as interesting as the lore in the main game. The new locations were fun but the cave setting does become super repetitive and boring towards the end. You get two new powers which are fun but only work in the context of the new area (as far as I know, I could be wrong) so they don't seem to really change the way you would play *that* much, but it's still good to have something new. I'm still pretty excited to see what they do with the next DLC considering the Alan Wake tease, but this was kind of disappointing.

33. Journey to the Savage Planet | PC | 07/04/2020 | ★★★★

I really liked this game. Just jumping around the planet was so much fun and some of the later traversal abilities made the whole world so fun to explore. It's a game that seems to rely a lot on its humour which was pretty hit and miss for me, but some of the FMV I thought was really well done and, while not laugh out loud funny, I think it succeeded more than it failed. The art style is fun and colourful and, even though there weren't *that* many creature varieties, I still liked what there was. About half way through I just started mainlining the main storyline and avoiding the sidequests and hidden areas but I still enjoyed my time with the game overall. I had read that the final boss was a bummer so I had low expectations going in and still thought it was an okay end to a pretty okay game.

34. 198X | PC | Completed 07/04/2020 | ★★★★

This is a short homage to the arcade games of the late 80s wrapped in the story of a young kid escaping from his broken home by spending time at an arcade late at night. The games featured are pretty simple facsimiles of popular genres from the era but where the game really shines is in its incredible pixel art and music. This game has the best video game soundtrack I've heard in a long time. I loved the tone and story that this game was going for and, considering this is apparently the first chapter in a larger story, I will definitely be onboard for whatever they do next.

35. Half-Life: Alyx | PC | Completed 10/04/2020 | ★★★

I was pretty down on this game for most of the way through except for maybe the first half an hour and the final half an hour. Half-Life: Alyx is an incredible achievement for big VR games. It's a game that just looks expensive. The scope and look of the environments show that this is coming from a developer that cares deeply about VR as a medium, so I totally understand why so many people fell in love with it. For me it was just, for the majority of my time playing it, it was tedious. There are like four hacking and unlocking puzzles that you do repeatedly and there are five enemy types you fight and you spend the game going through some pretty similar scenery for long, long stretches that feel even longer than they normally would outside of a VR game. A big thing that people say in regards to Half-Life: Alyx is that it wouldn't work as a non-VR game because, once you lose the scope and immersion from the VR experience, it would lose its whole appeal. Which is true, but I think that in saying that it misses a larger point of the mechanics not holding up outside of VR because they're not really that interesting. It's fun to shoot a headcrab flying at your face for the first time. By the 50th time it happens it's boring and has lost all of its excitement.

There are some truly incredible moments in this game, even beyond the ending which I really, really liked, but ultimately I have the same problem with this as I do with most Half-Life games where those cool moments are spread too thin between increasingly boring action. In a normal game it's a lot easier to forgive but I find getting into a VR game such a commitment that those long stretches of hallways and headcrab zombie after headcrab zombie ends up feeling like they don't value my time. It's a great 6-8 hours game wrapped in a 12-15 hour game's body which is a real shame. As it stands right not Half-Life: Alyx is probably the best experience you can have in VR but, for all of the good that it does, I think it still shows that there is a lot of figuring out still to do on what makes a good long-form VR game.

36. The Warriors | Playstation 2 (on Playstation 4) | Completed 18/04/2020 | ★★★★

I think that The Warriors is one of Rockstar's most impressive artistic achievements. The managed to replicate the tone and feeling of a cult classic movie while greatly expanding on the lore of the world and characters without it ever feeling really forced. There are 23 main missions in this game and only 5 of them cover the events of the movie, that's a high percentage of new content and it all gels together really well. There are some things that stick out as just Rockstar writing quirks of the era, but for the most part it's a really successful expansion of a fun and interesting world. The gameplay has a lot of PS2-era jank but it's easy enough to get used to. I love this game and I really wish Rockstar would do more off-beat projects like it.

37. Journey to the Savage Planet: Hot Garbage | PC | Completed 19/04/2020 | ★★

I really liked the main game but found the DLC really disappointing. The new environment isn't *that* different from the main game and the additional robot enemies are just kind of a chore to fight. The traversal of the main game was my favourite part of it but the DLC emphasises a new jetpack mechanic that just feels floaty and bad and weird. The final boss encounter of the main game is divisive at best, but largely considered as bad and annoying, and the boss here seems to be an exercise in seeing how they could just make it even *more* annoying. It's a bummer. A refined version of the main game could be something really cool and fun, but this seems to just double down on everything I didn't really enjoy.

38. Animal Crossing: New Horizons | Nintendo Switch | Completed 24/04/2020 | ★★★★

It feels really weird to have played a game for 60+ hours and feel like you're on the low end over total play time with everyone who played. I liked New Horizons a lot, but after getting my island to where I wanted it to be and being pretty happy with how my house was setup and a decent chunk of the museum is filled, I just really have no drive to continue playing. I have played every day since release (never once missed those bonus Nook Miles baby) and had a really good time overall, but the last few days I have struggled through finishing the final inclines and bridges I wanted. In many ways this is the most structured Animal Crossing ever, a game that you could even argue has a definitive end goal, albeit one that once you reach it you are far from discouraged to keep playing. But it's still a lot more Animal Crossing for better or worse and, while I think overall it's a better game than New Leaf, it's difficult for me to totally fall completely in love with something that almost immediately felt so familiar. It's a very good game and I'll almost certainly spend a lot more time with it, just the main focus with this game is now over and I feel very comfortable moving it to my completed pile.

39. Final Fantasy VII Remake | Playstation 4 | Completed 25/04/2020 | ★★★★★

It's really difficult to imagine how this could have been any better. I had really high expectations going into this and it exceeded all of them. Final Fantasy VII is one of my favourite games of all time, and I think I might like Crisis Core even more, so to take a game and a world and a story that I'm so familiar with and continue to surprise me felt truly magical. The game hits all of the major beats of the Midgar section of the original game and treats its source material with such loving respect that it's really amazing to see. And then the way it ends and the way they build to the future of the remake is incredible and surprising and really unexpected in a very cool way. I love this game and think that they achieved something that I otherwise would have thought was impossible. I have no idea where the second part of this story is going to go which feels so weird and exciting. What an amazing, amazing game.

40. Cloudpunk | PC | Completed 28/04/2020 | ★★★

Cloudpunk is like a game entirely made up of the parts in open world games where you drive from mission marker to mission marker without ever actually undertaking the mission. It's set in a cyberpunk world that takes great inspiration from Blade Runner and, to a lesser extent, The Fifth Element. It has some pretty shoddy voice acting and the story, while fun, is somewhat uninspired. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's a game that relies almost entirely on its story and voice acting and when those things don't hold up the whole way through it's pretty tough to recommend.

41. Kingdom Hearts III | Playstation 4 | Completed 28/04/2020 | ★★★★

I started my play through in February 2019, so it took me a long time to actually see it through to the end. In that time, I had heard a lot about how underwhelming and unsatisfying the ending was but I ended up really liking it. Kingdom Hearts is never going to be something that has a clean end with every question answered, but this felt as close as we're ever likely to get. The actual game is fun even if it does feel like the combat is at its most mindless. It's a solid entry and, after like a decade of handheld only releases, it was nice to play a big, flashy Kingdom Hearts entry again. I thought I would just play Re:Mind out of obligation, but now I'm really looking forward to it while also dreading the inevitably long wait for whatever comes next

42. Kingdom Hearts II Re:Mind | Playstation 4 | Completed 30/04/202 | ★★

I was really, really disappointed with this DLC. I didn't know the scope of it before going in, I just knew about the references in the ending, but the actual bulk of the DLC is incredibly disappointing. Just reliving the last act of the main game with some additional scenes and fights is a huge bummer. For a series that hides such important content in mobile games and portable spin offs to have its first major piece of DLC be so... meaningless truly sucks. I think I have a higher than average opinion of the base game, but I truly did not like this at all.

43. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance | PC | Completed 12/05/2020 | ★★

There was a point midway through this game where I was really, really high on it. The creativity of Murderworld and the Diablo-ness of Mephisto's Realm was a lot of fun, but after that it just felt so much like the same thing over and over. It really feels like Gun or American Wasteland, those Activision games that feel trapped in some void between the original Xbox and PS2 and the 360 and PS3. I was really hoping that this would scratch a Marvel Heroes itch that I've had since that game shut down, but it didn't really. I know a lot of people say that this is the high point of the series which, if that's true, maybe playing through all of these games is going to be a long and fruitless endeavour.

44. Dead Space | PC | Completed 17/05/2020 | ★★★★★

I really think that Dead Space stands alongside Resident Evil 4 as just a perfect survival horror game. It's really easy to be reductive of Dead Space and say that it's just Alien + Event Horizon, but they do such a good job of world building and creating a universe that doesn't just feel real, but feels unique while treading in pretty familiar water. The only real complaints I have about this game are the mouse and keyboard controls on PC. The mouse input is notoriously bad and even when modded to change to raw mouse input it still never feels right. It also suffers from a pretty underwhelming final boss fight, but I think underwhelming boss fights are just a staple of the genre. The art and level design still hold up phenomenally well for a twelve-year-old game, so much that it feels like it has barely aged at all.

45. Dead Space: Extraction | Playstation 3 (RPCS3) | Completed 19/05/2020 | ★★

I didn't like this game very much, but it is because this was probably the worst circumstance in which I could have played it. While going back through the Dead Space franchise I've also been reading and watching all of the additional material that was released. Before Extraction there is a comic book and an animated movie that serve as prequels to the original game and this was the third prequel story in a row that I have experienced and I'm just kind of burned out on this one very specific point in time in this universe. It's also a light gun game that I played with a controller which is never going to be a fun time. Maybe in other circumstances with the right controls I would have had a better time, but as it stands this was just kind of a bummer.

46. Dead Space: Ignition | Playstation 3 (RPCS3) | Completed 19/05/2020 | ★★

This was less a video game and more an animated comic book with a bunch of hacking mini games. Like literally the only gameplay is three different hacking puzzles that increase in difficulty. They're mostly boring, but there is one kind of racing one that is actually pretty fun, which is really the only redeeming factor of a pretty boring and super short game. I've found going through all of this Dead Space stuff that isn't just the three main games that the tone of the story is all over the place. If you saw the story of this game without any other context it wouldn't really convey how dark and serious the Dead Space universe actually is. Outside of the first game and the pretty good comic series that lead up to its release, I've found all of this extra stuff around it to be super underwhelming.

47. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 | PC | Completed 22/05/2020 | ★★★

I have a lot of misgivings about this game compared to its predecessor. I think there are a lot of things that it actively does worse, but I still enjoyed it a lot more. The first game ended on kind of a cliff-hanger which is just thrown out here. I had some optional dialogue with Thor that just said "oh yeah we dealt with that, don't worry about it". If anything, it would have been better to just not address it at all. I think the environments that you visit in this game are so much more boring than they were in the first game. The first game is colourful and almost always different and has some real high points by sending you to such contrasting locations. Every location in 2 feels the same. It also feels less like a dungeon crawler than the first game did. Ultimate Alliance 1 really feels like it's reaching to be Diablo-like and, while it might have been the intention to do the same here, this feels much more linear and focused, more an action game than an action RPG. I also really, really don't like the Civil War storyline and think it's very boring so reliving that in video game form was just not that compelling to me. The mutant nanomachine virus thing felt anticlimactic as the conclusion to the slapped together war story and the game kind of just... ends with everyone pretty much back where they were when it all started. Despite all of this I still think I had more fun playing this than I did the first. The game looks a lot better and the presentation of its story, especially the prerendered cut scenes, are incredibly stylish and really hold up. Even though the actual level design is less inspired the art design of the world and characters feels overall a lot more consistent. It's stupider in a way even though it tries very hard to be a lot more serious in its subject matter, and it's not as over the top goofy or fun, so I can't really explain *why* I think this is better, I just do.

48. Jackass: The Game | Playstation 2 | Completed 23/05/2020 | ★★★

I've had this game just stuck in my head for so long that I had to play through it again. It's just a mini-game collection build around the premise that you're shooting scenes for a season worth of TV. The mini-games are spotty in quality, and at best they are just serviceable, but the thing that I have always really liked about this game is how it really understood the spirit and the energy of Jackass. It uses the video game medium to take the vibe of the show and blow it out to crazy, cartoonish proportions while still maintaining the innocent fun that is integral to what makes Jackass work. A lot of other shows and movies that came out around and after Jackass' success totally misunderstood that, and often times they just felt mean or gross without ever feeling fun. This is a game that views Jackass through the Looney Tunes prism that it was intended. It's not a good game by any means, but it does a lot more than I think anyone can reasonably expect from a Jackass video game adaptation.

49. Maneater | PC | Completed 25/05/2020 | ★★★★★

I played 10 hours of this in two days, 100% the entire game, which is something I *never* do. I understand people's complaints around the game being repetitive and one note (which it kind of is), but I just found the simplicity to be so much fun. It reminded me a lot of Journey to the Savage Planet, a small, pretty tight experience that just tries to do one thing and does it well. I liked Maneater a lot more than I did Savage Planet, mostly because the moment to moment action was so much more satisfying. The shark controls and just act of chewing up people in truly violent ways is so much fun. A really great B-tier game in an era where those just don't really exist anymore.

50. Minecraft Dungeons | PC | Completed 29/05/2020 | ★★★

I think Minecraft Dungeons has such great potential and I'm confident enough in the support that this game should receive that it will be a much better game the more time goes on, but with the first expansion already confirmed to be paid DLC I don't know how much the best version of this game will actually eventually cost. The potential for a lighter, more accessible Diablo is pretty great. Not that Diablo is by any means inaccessible, but I really can't think of anything in the genre that appeals to a wide age range of people that it has the potential to. The core of this game is really solid and fun and, even though it's still the same simple Minecraft aesthetic, it also looks really good. Hopefully it'll continue to grow and become a more fleshed out and fulfilling experience, but right now it feels more like a fun, short novelty than anything else.

51. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore | Nintendo Switch | Completed 31/05/2020 | ★★★

I played 45 hours of Tokyo Mirage Sessions and really came out of it feeling like I just have nothing to say about it. I loved the first 5 to 10 hours of it, a Persona-lite game in a bright and fun world. There was so much potential around the setting and how the twisted versions of the entertainment world could present itself in the game's dungeons, but once I hit the third dungeon or so it all just felt the same and became very obvious that they weren't really going to do anything more than what they had established. Nothing about the game is bad, and I think the turn-based combat with the encore system is a lot of fun, but going through the same superficial story after story without ever entering any amount of depth at all just became frustrating. The first half of the game was a really exciting experience that I genuinely loved and the second half was something that I just couldn't wait to be over.

52. Dead Space 2 | PC | Completed 03/06/2020 | ★★★★

Dead Space 2 is a weird game for me. I know a lot of people praise it as the high point of the series with 3 being a sharp decline, but I really think that everything that people grew to complain about started here. It's a good game, but it moves so far from what the original game did to be so great that it feels like a franchise that was suddenly taken over by a completely different creative force. I've felt like this since the first time I played it about five or six years ago, but the thing that really struck home with me this time was not just how the game feels so different tonally, but how it looks so different visually. The first Dead Space is an incredibly focused game artistically, with a confident and consistent industrial art style. The look of that game is integral to it's feel and what makes it such a classic survival horror game. But Dead Space 2 is all rounded edges. It's stylised in an almost cartoony way, removing so much of the tension and suspense in the process. Even the moments in the game that directly reference the original (going back to the Ishimura and the vintage engineer suit) feel so much less than because of the new art style they are presented it.

Despite the issues I have with it, it's still an incredibly solid and fun game. It's just not a horror game anymore, which is fine. It's an action romp through a space station. It's feels less like the Aliens to Dead Space's Alien but more like the Terminator 2 to Dead Space's The Terminator. It's not just an action-ified horror game, it feels like it exists in a different genre all together. In a vacuum it's great, it's a super fun ride that is incredibly fun to play. But when directly compared to its predecessor it's so disappointing.

I guess the entire conflict I feel toward this game should be summed up with the question "Should Isaac Clarke talk?". I feel confident saying that the answer is no.

53. Sludge Life | PC | Completed 05/06/2020 | ★★★

Sludge Life is a game with an incredible aesthetic and amazing tone that, when you're actually playing it, is kind of underwhelming. It's one of those art pieces that is amazing to look at but maybe that's the best way to view it. Exploring the world is initially fun but I thought the novelty wore off quickly and, while the dialogue in it is good, there's not that much of it and definitely not enough variety. But it's also a game that has a dedicated app to keeping track of how many cigarettes you've smoked and you can spit repeatedly into this rich guy's food so how bad can it really be. It's a game that, while it's free on the Epic Games Store, I can recommend without giving it a second thought, but once that free period ends and they start charging real actual money for it it becomes a bit more of a complicated question. I'll think about how this game made me feel for a long time, but I'm not sure that I will ever have the desire to actually play it again.

54. Parasite Eve | Playstation (Retroarch - Beetle PSX HW Core) | Completed 08/06/2020 | ★★★★★

I didn't really know that much about Parasite Eve before playing it, just that it had a unique turn based combat system and was set in modern day, but I was really blown away by *everything* about this game. The combat is so much fun once I learned how ti properly navigate during battles. I could see how people could criticise it for maybe being too simplistic, but I really enjoyed almost every battle I had. The weapon and armour customisation was fun (if initially a little confusing) and was enough to keep me engaged when finding new items. I also *loved* the way they naturally turned relatively mundane locations into pretty fun JRPG dungeons to explore. The presentation was also so incredibly surprising to me. The pixel art is beautiful and, even though I played it through an emulator, I kept it at it's default resolution because I just loved the whole vibe and how cohesive the game looked with the tone and story it was trying to tell. The map menu especially was just a small thing that went a long way to creating this feel of something that was actually bigger than it was.

This story is, like... I hesitate to say *good*, but it was unique and I was genuinely interested the entire way through. Even though I think I read the word mitochondria more times in about twenty minutes of this game than I ever have in my entire life (and there is just an unparalleled amount of sperm talk in this game), it still felt reasonably straight forward and easy to digest. I also found the ending to be weirdly moving, even though it seemed to be purposefully ambiguous.

This is one of those cult classic games that, after playing it, I immediately understand why people are still so in love with this game. Even though I'm playing it for the first time a good twenty years after its release it still feels so fresh and unique and I'm already disappointed that there aren't a million other games like it. It's an incredibly special game and I'm glad that I finally made the time to sit down and play through it.

55. Panzer Dragoon | Sega Saturn (Retroarch - Beetle Saturn Core) | Completed 09/06/2020 | ★★★

I'm incredibly bad at shooters and when I do choose to play one I generally stick to more forgiving games like Sky Force Anniversary that allows a sense of progression and isn't so punitive about losing progress. I didn't really know too much about Panzer Dragoon before playing it. I knew it was a rail shooter with dragons or whatever but, embarrassingly, the only reason I knew that much was because of the coverage around Crimson Dragon at the launch of the Xbox One. I'm not sure what the reputation for this game's difficulty is but, on normal, I still had a pretty rough time. Maybe I'm just bad at it but I constantly felt like I was in positions where I couldn't avoid being hit, and found moving the dragon's body in general to be inconsistent and difficult, and often felt like my shots weren't firing where my reticle was aimed. A lot of that could be because I was playing on an Xbox controller using an analogue stick and not the controller the game was built for, and a lot more of it could just be because I am truly bad at the game. After a decent amount of runs that only ever made it as far as the early moments of Chapter 4 I just defaulted back to using save states like a true coward to inch my way forward level by level with a credit hidden up my sleeve if I needed it. It was still a rewarding experience finishing the game but probably not as rewarding had I spent more time with the game and actually learnt more to progress further.

I also really, really love the art in this game. It's one of those art styles that the heavy pixelation of the Saturn compliments really well. It just created, along with the equally good soundtrack, a unique tone for the whole game that went further in telling a story about this world than the narrative and cut scenes did on their own. It just feels so confident in its world building in a really impressive way, which is a lot more than I ever expected going in to the game.

I also played through the Game Gear game Panzer Dragoon Mini which, while a fun little novelty, wasn't really worth creating its own entry for. I played through the entire game on normal in about twenty minutes and while it has its moments with some of the pixel art for its bosses it's a pretty barren feeling game with just no real challenge. It's also the first non-Sonic Game Gear game that I've ever played, so there's that too I guess.

56. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei | Sega Saturn (Retroarch - Beetle Saturn Core) | Completed 13/06/2020 | ★★★★

I have no idea of how these games are thought of in the Panzer Dragoon community, but I really loved this game. A lot of it has to do with the game just being a lot more forgiving. The option to save and not having your progress limited by a finite amount of continues was really enjoyable. I liked the level and boss variety a lot more as well as well. The thing I loved the most about this was the story and how the world was presented. The way that it (or at least how it felt to me) was that the game focused more on tone and feeling than telling a direct story, in a way that elevated the narrative that was loosely told and how the world felt that you were traveling through. It felt like you were just experiencing this small piece of this larger world, you were a small part fighting a smaller, personal battle in a much, much larger struggle. I still had some issues with avoiding projectiles. The movement never felt like I was in as much control as I should have been, and attacks that I felt like I dodged hit and shots that I thought would hit missed completely. But it was less frustrating considering the more generous nature of the game overall.

57. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order | Nintendo Switch | Completed 15/06/2020 | ★★

This game should not be called Ultimate Alliance. There's a big tone difference between the first and second games, but there is still some level of consistency there. They want to pivot in a new direction but still bother to create *some* kind of connective tissue. This does not do that, which I think speaks to the overall lack of care this game has to its predecessors. The first two games try to care about how you choose in your party, to the best of its abilities, but this game just straight up ignores it. Depending on the situation in 1 and 2 the character you are currently controlling can have unique dialogue and characters will interact with you a certain way. In 3 your choices are completely ignored and you may come across instances where a character is talking shit about the character that you are actively controlling as though you aren't that person. I had one instance while playing as Wolverine where someone just laid into Wolverine and then said to me "but don't tell him I said that". But that's me, you're talking about me. The game does not react to you at all and it's incredibly disappointing. But the most disappointing part of this game is how it is just MCU-lite. Established characters in the first two games are now different nationalities and ethnicities to match their cinematic counterparts, but it's done so in a way that just feels cheap and bad. I don't need to hear your bad Robert Downey Jr impersonator. I don't need this bootleg Samuel L Jackson telling me what to do. It strips this very focused comic world of any unique identity, and I don't really know who it's meant to serve. I can't imagine a big fan of the MCU would be excited to hear that this character kinda sorta almost looks and sounds like their movie counterpart. It just feels so misguided and weird and just makes the whole experience worse. The writing in the game is actively bad, the plot is just a less spirited version of the Infinity Stones story that never feels like it really knows what it is doing and then ends limply, and the combat is both extremely shallow and either way too grind-y or way too easy depending on which of the two difficulties you choose that are available on your first play through. I just didn't enjoy my time with this at all and, even though I bought the expansion pass fully intending to play through all of the additional content, I just don't think I have the patience or desire to really play through it at all.

58. Mario Tennis Aces | Nintendo Switch | Completed 19/06/2020 | ★★★

The story mode to this game feels incredibly cheap, but it's still fun. Like the core of the game is so solid that the challenges are still fun to play through, it's just all of the wrapping around it basically feels like a mobile game. There are some weird difficulty spikes, (blooper.............) especially when contrasted against the final challenges of the game which are really easy, but they never became *too* frustrating that they stopped being fun. The one point I got stuck at for the longest was the advanced rally challenge that took me way too long to get past (maybe like over an hour???), but the relief and satisfaction of beating it really speaks to how fun the game is at its most basic level. It's disappointing to me that Nintendo and Camelot never do more with these sports titles because there is so much potential, but hopefully the success of Golf Story is enough to kind of push them in the right direction.

I think the online for this might be pretty dead, but I played a decent amount of it at launch. I just don't think I'm interested in competitive multiplayer when it comes to arcade games like this. I enjoy a goofy story mode with interesting and fun challenges. This got there a little bit, and was a huge improvement over the Wii U entry, but I just want more.

59. Ratchet & Clank | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 22/06/2020 | ★★★★

I really love the first Ratchet & Clank. I think the games improve on themselves one after the other (especially the PS2 trilogy), but there's just a simplicity and earnestness to the first game that is really charming. The levels are short enough that you can get through the challenges for the entire level pretty quickly in a quick session. It's like the perfect game to just sit down with maybe an hour at a time. The final boss fight is maybe the only part of the game that is poorly paced, with the fight both taking way too long and having really punishing checkpointing. It's not like it's overly difficult, but the penalty for dying when you're like five minutes into the fight is way too steep. But otherwise it's a fun, light adventure, maybe one of the most purely joyful games the Playstation 2 ever produced.

60. Star Wars Episode I: Racer | Nintendo Switch | Completed 27/06/2020 | ★★★★

I love this game. For my eleventh birthday in 1999 I got a Nintendo 64 with Episode I: Racer packed in and I have loved it ever since. But, in saying that, this port is kinda bad? It's not *all* bad. Mapping the game to modern controls feels really good, and it runs at a super solid 60, which is like a bare minimum considering there is no real graphical upgrade (outside of some lighting maybe?), so the actual core of the game still feels fantastic. If anything, the increased framerate and modernised controls makes the game feel kind of easier. Taking quick shortcuts on the fly felt challenging in the 64 version, but here it felt like I could whip around with ease. But a lot of this port feels broken. The audio is atrocious. It's super blown out in races and then in the optional banter dialogue sequences with each course's favourite racer there doesn't seem to be any audio at all. And the UI in race, especially the different mini-map options, just doesn't work. It's disappointing because if they got all of this right (which doesn't seem like a lot to ask from a stripped back port) it would be a great version of the game. Even with these issues it's a game that I still deeply love, but I just don't know if I could recommend the port to anyone without a similar level of nostalgia.

61. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater | Playstation | Completed 27/06/2020 | ★★★★

It's really difficult going back to the first Tony Hawk without having manuals or reverts. I spent the entire time inputting the motions to continue combos and just forgetting that it didn't work. The first Tony Hawk game is still a lot of fun, though I quickly remembered how I don't like the back third of the levels of this game (with the exception of Burnside which is a great competition level). And I think I just actively hate Downhill Jam, which I know is a favourite of a lot of people, I just really, really don't like it. In a vacuum it's a great game and there aren't many other games that I've spent more time with in my life, but it's just hard to go back to it knowing everything that came after it. It just feels like a skeleton of a game in a way. But it's a very good skeleton.

62. Shadow of the Tomb Raider | PC | Completed 28/06/2020 | ★★★

I was a really big fan of the 2013 reboot, however, as much as I liked that game, the one thing that I really disliked was what it did to Lara's character. It took this confident and charismatic and *cool* woman and just turned her into a misery machine for the sake of realism. Rise of the Tomb Raider felt like it doubled down on this as well. Across the first two games I don't know that Lara ever expresses anything resembling joy, it's just a constant spiral of pain and arrogance and selfishness and shame leading to more pain. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the only game in this trilogy where Lara gets to feel like a person. And it doesn't feel like it's because of the things that came before it, but that she was being written by someone who finally realised that these small moments of humanity are what endear you to a character. The rest of the writing and the story is kind of rote and serviceable at best, but Lara finally gets a chance to be more than just a vector for painful death animations, which is something I greatly appreciate.

The actual gameplay is fine. It feels like a less refined version of the game that came before it. There are some environments in this game that are visually maybe my favourite of the trilogy, with the small tomb with puzzles built around the stations of the cross being easily my favourite part of the game. But it's a game whose mechanics feel like they're trapped in a previous generation and, even though it's still solid and fun, it's incredibly uninspiring. It's the most aggressively average game I've played in a long time and, even then, I think I would be on the more positive side of the general reception to this game. I did feel weirdly emotional during the credits where it ended saying this was the end of this version of Lara's story and thanked everyone for joining along. For all of the faults I've had with this trilogy it's still been a lot of fun seeing it through to the end.

63. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 02/07/2020 | ★★★

In my memory I thought I liked Going Commando a lot more than the original game but, on revisiting it, I just don't think that's true anymore. The sequel improves on a lot of things. It introduces a rudimentary experience system for upgrading your health and also upgrading your weapons the more you use them, which incentivises you to vary your weapon usage in a way that the original just didn't do. And the weapons are all a lot more fun pretty much across the board. But I thought the overall level design was a lot weaker than the original and, maybe most frustrating of all, I just found the combat to be significantly less fun. So many enemies are just a grind to fight now, with the difficulty being increased by just making so many enemies so much spongier than they were in the original. It just made encounters boring and, by the end of the game, I was just running past almost everything I could to reach the level's goal.

It's still a fun game and is by no means bad, but after being so fresh off of the original it really highlights how weak the moment to moment gameplay feels in comparison.

64. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 08/07/2020 | ★★★★★

I've been trying to space out the Ratchet games as I play through them so I don't burn out, but I just truly could not wait to play this game. It's one of the most purely fun games I've ever played. If Going Commando leaned into being more difficult than this game goes the other way. It chooses to be light and fun over giving a real challenge and, for Ratchet games in particular, if you are going to lean further on one side of the scale this is the side I want it to be on. It's also the game that just establishes so much of the things about Ratchet that have become iconic. It's the first appearance of Secret Agent Clank, the rehabilitation of Captain Qwark and the formation of the Q-Force. And, most importantly, it's the first appearance of Dr. Nefarious who is one of the most underrated antagonists in video game history. His design is so good and the comic banter between him and his robot butler guy is still funny today. This is also the first game that has a more traditional story structure and it allowed the characters to shine so much more. It's easily the best written game of the original trilogy and feels focused beyond just cutscenes used as a justification to get to the next world. It's a lot more combat focused with less platforming than the previous games and, while it's not necessarily noticeable in a vacuum, playing the first three games in close succession really just highlighted how a lot of this game is just combat arena to combat arena, which would probably be the only real criticism of the game that I have. I really love this game and, unless there are some surprises in the PS3 games that I haven't played before, I think it might really be the high point of the series for me.

65. Ratchet: Deadlocked | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 10/07/2020 | ★★★

I truly just cannot stop playing Ratchet and Clank games. This was my first time playing Deadlocked and I really didn't know what to expect. I know it was more combat focused (which, coming off of Up Your Arsenal's increased focus on combat, it makes a lot of sense) and that was really it. And, to be fair, that's kind of all it is. It's just a world filled with half a dozen or so combat challenges, with some vehicle combat sections and races mixed in for *a little* variety. For what this is it's pretty fun, but it feels so incongruous when you look at the games that came before it. Especially when you look at the weapons that came before it. Deadlocked feels like it has less weapons than the average Ratchet game, but instead it introduces a more robust weapon modding mechanic to make the crazier aspect of the weapon effects more DIY. It's a good concept but in execution I just found the one status mod early for each weapon I used and just didn't experiment with it at all. It's a fun game for what it is, but it feels like a compromised experience. The combat doesn't feel more involved or strategic than it would in a mainline game, so that being the only focus just sort of inadvertently points out all of the things that you're missing out on.

66. Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters | Playstation 2 (PCSX2) | Completed 13/07/2020 | ★★

I really didn't like this game very much, but it's almost as if I can't trust my own experience. I played a PS2 port of a PSP game on a PS2 emulator, so I don't know if they fault lies in the emulation or in the port of if it's just inherent to the game itself. Size Matters just feels bad to play. There is a snappiness to the movement of Ratchet games that I think up until now I have taken for granted. Playing this game is just so frustrating. The movement is just so slow and imprecise. The platforming feels atrocious with jumps feeling like the just stop all forward momentum in mid-air. And the camera is constantly so tight that you really have no peripheral vision in combat. There were some high points in this game, though. I thought some of the level design was incredibly cool and inventive, especially stuff like the Dreamscape level and when you're exploring inside of Clank. And the space combat stuff with Giant Clank was a lot of fun, it reminded me a lot of the early gummi ship levels in Kingdom Hearts which I always liked a lot. But overall it's just kind of disappointing because, out of all of the games that I haven't played before in this franchise, this was one of the games I was looking forward to the most, and I am coming away from it with it easily being my least favourite so far.

67. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction | Playstation 3| Completed 25/07/2020 | ★★★

I really liked the first few hours of this game. It feels so tight and fast, especially coming off of Size Matters, but about half way through I kind of just fell off of it. The action is good, but I think it has some of the more boring level design in the series, which hurts the moment to moment feeling of the game. The other big issue I have with it is that it feels super over written. I've always enjoyed that narratives of Ratchet games, even in a game like Deadlocked where it is super thin, but something about Tools of Destruction feels too dense. It's trying to tell a larger story, which I think is a fantastic idea in theory, but the execution just feels boring and convoluted. It's the first Ratchet game I've played where I've kind of just zoned out in the cut scenes or whenever anyone was talking. It also feels a lot less funny, with most of it's humour coming from Qwark being a bumbling idiot and a kind of slapstick, inept supervillain. Which, again, in theory is fine, but this is the sixth game in a row where this has all felt the same, and this definitely feels like a weaker version of that. It might not help that I've been playing these all so close together, but I think in a vacuum it would still not feel as fresh or as funny as the previous games in the series. It's still good, but as the first big game after the generation jump it just feels kind of disappointing to me.

68. SUPERHOT | PC | Completed 26/07/2020 | ★★★★

I knew that SUPERHOT had a meta story, but I didn't really know what it was and I was really surprised that it was far and away my favourite part of the game. I liked the puzzle-like gameplay enough, it's fun and when you get a good flow it's pretty satisfying, but it didn't really hook me as much as I thought that it would. If it weren't for the story, which is just so engaging and fun, I don't know that I would have enjoyed just going through level after level. Building the idea of spreading word of mouth and encouraging others to play the game into the narrative is such a fun idea and it's so well executed. Even though people have said so much about SUPERHOT since it's release it was really refreshing that this was still kind of a surprise to me.

69. Streets of Rage 4 | PC | Completed 29/07/2020 | ★★★★

I am comically bad at 2D beat 'em ups, so I just had to go through this on easy after getting my butt handed to me just on normal. Games like this are the kinds of games where I just can't believe people can be so good at them and breeze through it on higher difficulties. Even though I am actively bad at it, I still had a ton of fun. The look of this game is just perfect, it's the kind of thing you just need to see one screenshot of to be sold on. And the music might even be better, a modern synth soundtrack that totally holds up on its own and doesn't just sound like nostalgia bait. It's just an all round super solid game that I'm glad exists. Hopefully it opens the doors to Sega allowing more people to take chances with their older unused franchises.

70. Ghost of Tsushima | Playstation 4 | Completed 31/07/2020 | ★★★

I had such a weird time with this game. I think it looks really good, even if the way the colours blended with the world got kind of tiring after awhile. Everything felt so segregated, like here's a big patch of red and here is a big patch of white and here is a big patch of yellow. It was almost like walking through a map at the end of a match of Splatoon. I liked the combat as well, though the enemy variety got pretty stale and, once the dripfeed of new skills ends, it feels very one note. But even the combat felt compromised with an awful camera and weird enemy tracking. The story ended up being really engaging and well told, but the first half of it is just spread too thin and by the time I got to the meaty, emotional parts of the story I was so burned out on the repetitive combat and one note mission structure. Overall it's a solid game, but it just feels antiquated in a way. It's an open world that I think tricks you into being more exciting and interesting than it is when all it has to offer is the same experience over and over and over.

71. Secret Agent Clank | Playstation Portable (PPSSPP) | Completed 31/07/2020 | ★★

Out of all of the Ratchet games that I hadn't played before this might have been the one I was looking forward the least due to it's pretty bad reputation. I didn't really know what to expect, but there are some unique things this game does that I actually really liked. The switching from protagonists was fun, especially the Captain Qwark sections where you are playing out these imaginary scenarios as he lies to his biographer about how big of a hero he is. And mixing up the kinds of gameplay from just standard combat and platforming with stealth (which is actually really clunky and bad) to just having a straight up rhythm game element (these sections, while fun, also just go on for way too long and the punishment for failing them is just too high). But, ultimately, the PSP was just not a system designed for the kind of gameplay the Ratchet games excel at. The combat is slow at best and, more often than not, frustrating and inconsistent at worst. Fighting the camera and the lock on in this game is easily the most difficult part, and it makes an interesting and creative game just an absolute chore to play. It's easily my least favourite Ratchet game to this point and it's going to take just an awful, awful game to surpass it.

72. Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty | Playstation 3 | Completed 01/08/2020 | ★★★★

Quest for Booty feels less like a spin off downloadable game and more like DLC for Tools of Destruction. But it's a very fun DLC experience. One of the things that I have wanted from Ratchet games is taking one planet and just diving into it further, having multiple locations, and allowing the planets to actually feel like these large spaces that differ from the Star Wars problem of having each planet represent a single biome. This doesn't go *that* far, but it all takes place on a singular planet and I think the story is a lot more focused because of it. This game is short and light and just hits all of the Ratchet pleasure centres pretty quickly before ending, which I really enjoyed. And it ends on a fantastic cliffhanger that genuinely has me very excited to start A Crack in Time. I like shorter stand alone experiences like this between larger releases, and I hope its something that we see a lot more of in the future.

73. Gears 5 | PC | Completed 04/08/2020 | ★★★

I played the first half of the campaign for Gears 5 back when it released but kind of fell off of it, so this was just me going back and finishing it off. It was a good, solid experience, but it all just feels so familiar. I know the gameplay is faster and tighter than it was in the Xbox 360 games, but the evolution is so subtle that it just feels exactly the same. It all feels the same. You fight enemies that look just like the enemies you faced in the first game, you fight through waves and waves to try and reach an objective or get a big super weapon to work, and then it inevitably fails so you gotta go do some other garbage. The only real differences between this and the other games in the franchise are the open areas you can kind of explore on a vehicle and do some more structured side missions, but ultimately it's just driving around an empty hub and then doing some optional content that feels identical to everything else you've done in the game. The game looks really good, with the weather effects in particular looking fantastic, and I think the transition over the last two games from the original group of protagonists to Gears of War: The Next Generation has been handled really well and pretty seamlessly. But, overall, it just feels so uninspiring, like this game could have released any time between 2009 and 2019.

74. The Touryst | PC | Completed 06/08/2020 | ★★

I heard so much positive word of mouth about this game when it was only on the Switch that I was really excited to play it when it launched on game pass. And I understand why it is thought of so highly. I like the premise a lot, it reminded me a lot of A Short Hike which felt like a Zelda-lite without the combat, but with a world that is more varied and interesting to explore. But the actual act of exploring it was just so frustrating more often than not. There are significant sections that require some pretty precise platforming with the game's isometric camera angle and weird floaty controls making it just feel completely awful. The puzzles are often the most frustrating kind where you can see what you need to do almost immediately but it then takes forever to execute. The game has a number of puzzle bosses in each of the temple locations which, while all relatively simple, could be quick to complete or not depending entirely on how the boss AI reacts. I wish I liked this game more, but I just spent more time than I would have liked annoyed and hoping that each section would just be over.

75. Yakuza: Dead Souls | Playstation 3 | Completed 08/08/2020 | ★★★★

This game has such a negative reputation that my expectations were so low, but I really like Dead Souls a lot. The idea of a goofy, non-canonical side story in the Yakuza universe is so appealing to me. Obviously this isn't the only time Yakuza has done this (with games like Kenzan, Ishin, and even Fist of the North Star), but having this game set in Kamurocho with all of the familiar Yakuza characters makes this game just feel kind of unique and special to me. It was really fun to watch this familiar location, a city I have played through so many times and watch evolve over the seven Yakuza games I had played previously, slowly and systematically get destroyed. Seeing the zombie quarantine zone grow and envelop more of the city felt so much more impactful because this was a setting I know so well. I also didn't expect this game to have such an involved story mode. Really all I knew about the game before playing it was that it was a zombie shooter set in the world of Yakuza, so I expected a looser, more arcade-y kind of game. But, while it maybe wasn't as dense or have as many twists and turns as a traditional Yakuza game, it still felt a Yakuza game. The action was fun even if the aiming and movement felt kind of off, but it never really felt like a drag to play. I understand why this game had such a rough time when it launched, in a time when Yakuza was still incredibly niche and Sega were handling the localisation and marketing of the series pretty poorly in the west. It also didn't help that for a long time this game seemed like it would be the last Yakuza game we ever got translated, so I understand the resentment toward it. But accepting it for what it is now, knowing that Yakuza eventually broke through and found a larger audience, I think it deserves to be revisited and hopefully it finds a new level of appreciation.

76. Batman: The Telltale Series | PC | Completed 13/08/2020 | ★★★★★

I haven't played a Telltale game since Tales from the Borderlands so it was nice to go back into such a familiar kind of game. It feels like these games have only incrementally improved since The Walking Dead first blew up, but the core still feels fun even if the wrapping around it always feels broken. This is a really good Batman story. I am kind of over the re-litigation of Bruce Wayne's parents as a concept, but I think this is a really well-done version of that kind of story. I would, however, be happy if I didn't have to hear Troy Baker be the main voice in any game I ever play again.

77. Control: AWE | PC | Completed 01/09/2020 | ★★★★

I really, really like this. I love Alan Wake, and every time he appeared through flashbacks and every reference to the lore of that game and Bright Falls was just the best kind of fan service for me specifically. The new area felt pretty light, and it didn't have the new mechanics of the Foundation DLC, but overall I liked it a lot more as a story, which is really the thing I come to Remedy games for the most. I hope they live up to the promises they seem to be making, because this DLC left me incredibly excited for the future and whatever they announce next.