Justin Hewlett

This is the type of game you play with your 5 year old son or daughter because they are not old enough to play decent games yet. The type of game you play with that 5 year old wishing they'd hurry up and get old enough to at least play Minecraft or Terraria. The sort of game you play with your girlfriend hoping she might get into gaming so you have something else in common. The sort of game you give to your mum who has insomnia so she can let the boring narration help her get a decent sleep at night. The sort of game you see is well rated and buy on sale hoping it might compare to Journey or Inside but instead ends up being even more boring than RiME. These things might be a reason for you to buy the game and that is ok. I obviously didn't think it was very good though.

Just finished this one with 100% completion including all DLC and it was a lot of fun. I love the drifting mechanics and the boosting is great fun. The races are also well balanced most of the time. If you fall behind you normally have a chance to catch up and when you are leading a race you never really get too far ahead that it becomes boring. The additional gaming modes are all decent with drive or explode my favorite because your car gradually gains speed each lap and makes drifting more of a challenge. The only thing keeping it from being 5 stars is the lack of a story or career mode where you can upgrade your car and there is a satisfying sense of progression and increasing difficulty. There is a Grand Prix mode sort of like Mario Kart with 4 races and different levels of difficulty. All of the customisations to the cars at the race shop are cosmetic though and don't alter the cars ability. It was a bit of a grind to unlock and purchase them to achieve 100% game completion. Still a really good game for the price and worth playing if you love an arcade style racing game.

I have 100% completion on some excellent Metroidvania games. The Messenger, Guacamelee, Bloodstained ROT and Steamworld Dig. Metroidvania is one of my fave gaming categories. Axiom Verge was promising at the start but after 6 or 7 hours it runs into a major flaw. The back tracking becomes a chore. I have no problem with back tracking and exploration. That's a part of the magic in a Metroidvania game. The difference is that all the games I mentioned have a means of teleportation to make the backtracking manageable. How can they not have teleports here? You wouldn't even need to explain why there are teleports in a sci fi world where the character gains the ability to literally teleport through walls. It's baffling. Even if there was no way to "fast travel" it might be fine if there was more incentive to mindlessly backtrack. All the games I mentioned you farm resources or XP while exploring and backtracking so it makes the pay off worth the effort. In Axiom Verge you might find 1/5 health nodes you need to eventually to boost your health. If you are lucky enough to find 5 your health goes up. While doing this though you move yourself even further away from your main objective with no way of easily getting back there. If you can even find where to go since the game gives you 0 hints. It zaps the fun out of the game. It also seemed cool at first that you have so many types of firepower but most of the time you just stick with your fave one because they are not different enough that you absolutely need to use all them. It's a shame because the story had some intrigue, the bosses were very cool, the music was ok and the platforming was pretty good. Could've been a great game but turned out to be just ok.

A good game that gets a bit too much praise. The story is ok but far from the masterpiece people make it out to be. It's the usual "do robots / androids have feelings" story that's been done before. Detroit Become Human covered this theme better. The introduction, music and character design of the protagonist are the high points. All of them were excellent. I really do love the music so much. The shifts in battle perspective also helped keep the game more interesting. Some of the areas like the theme park looked really cool but were pretty lifeless and lacked exploration. The voice acting is also decent but unfortunately only limited to certain characters and moments which sort of kills the momentum at times. You can't hear the emotion of the situations unfolding all the time. Where the game really lacks though is the standard battle system. It doesn't provide much variety and it's a significant part of the game. Equipping different weapons barely changed things so destroying robots became a chore. Half the time it was just dodge, dodge, shoot, repeat. The game kept hinting something really good would happen but it just never did for me. Not a bad game but I doubt I will play it again.

I must admit I wasn't really sold on this game the first time I played it. Claptrap felt annoying and the highly praised gunplay didn't really compare to Doom which I had just completed and loved. I was ready to label this as Boringlands rather than Borderlands. The real turning point though was when I realised this game is actually more of an RPG than a FPS which wasn't obvious when I started. You do a lot of cool missions and interact with NPCs. You meet some great characters along the way and the gunplay just gets better and better. Gradually gaining weapons with better statistics and abilities along with shields, skills and modifications. The maps provided great variety and each character had personality. I now love Roland and the whole gang and even started to really appreciate Claptrap after we spent a very quiet and awkward birthday party together. I don't really like to write long reviews and I've probably missed mentioning heaps of great things about this game so I will finish by just adding that the soundtrack is truly excellent! Fantastic game.

Got 30 minutes into this one and turned it off disappointed. How come? Well I went in expecting Lord of the Rings with some spells, melee battles, fantastic dialogue and RPG elements. What I was playing though was a weird blend of Batman, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and Tomb Raider. (Only not as good as any of those games) I can't even remember a scene once in the movies where a stealth kill was used like the first thing you do in this game. Same with climbing around like Uncharted. Remember which scene they did that in the movie? Nope? Me either. I am sure it's not a terrible game because it's got some good reviews but the gameplay style didn't feel right for me. If I want to play a stealth game I will go play something like Dishonored or Deux Ex. Have people just not played these other games because I don't know why or how this would be considered 5 star material?

Played 4 hours and my impression is it's a geeky version of The Witcher 3 that takes itself very very seriously. It looks stunning and feels deep in every aspect except the battles that felt too repetitive based on my short playthrough. I wanted to enjoy it more but honestly the way the characters spoke was super geeky to the point where I didn't understand everything they were talking about. Choosing to voice some main characters with very thick European accents probably didn't help. I prefer something more edgy that doesn't take itself so serious like GTA, Yakuza, Persona 5, Spiderman. If you prefer serious conversations about mages, portals and relics + exploring beautiful environments you will love this game though. Wasn't worth more than 4 hours for me with so many amazing games to choose from in 2020.