Kyle Allen

You literally cannot convince me that this is a satirical piece on terminally online "social justice warriors". It simply HAS to be, otherwise it's just a poorly written heap of garbage designed to be violently inclusive for...exactly nobody. This is what happens if you compile all Vice and Buzzfeed articles from 2016 to present and forced a poor AI to compile a storyline and character archetypes around these articles. This is depressing.

I think if I gave this game a 3, it would be too generous. If I gave it a 1, it would be too brutal. Do not be deceived, this is NOT a Sea of Thieves adjacent. This is more like Assassin's Creed Black Flag but only the ship fighting parts. Don't get me wrong, the fights are fun but when it's the only thing to do, it gets boring quick. For a game that is based around some of the most ruthless explorers of the seven seas, you don't do much exploring outside of your ship. You can't even explore your own ship but you can customize it from a fairly large pool of customization options. The customization options in the game are numerous, from ship cosmetics to player cosmetics (which largely don't matter because for 90% of the gameplay, you play as the ship), to weaponry, hull blueprints, ship furniture, etc. Despite seeming to have an abundance of cosmetic options available for the low price of just having to play the game, I would say that might in itself be a pretty steep ask. I could also see Ubisoft being pretty stingy with any free handouts, so it wouldn't surprise me if we were limited to one set of free cosmetics for our ship and player while more interesting and eye catching ones would be generously added to their cash shop. I may change my score later but the patterns of this game seem to follow every other live service game: less of a priority on content and more priority over cosmetics. I hope I'm wrong and I can change the score but even then...even if you're free to get cosmetics for just playing the game, haven't we all played enough games whose endgames consist of dress up? After note: I absolutely DREAD another "battlepass" game.

Wouldn't recommend the game unless the devs changed a few things with updates. The game starts out promising enough, even if the hook is a little stereotypical for this genre of game. However, that's pretty much where my praise for this game ends. The first two areas of the game are great. Everything after just feels uninspired and artificially difficult. First off, after the first two parts, they start sending you more and more enemies which wouldn't be a problem if the guns were better at dismemberment and the melee fighting wasn't intended for one-on-one encounters. Secondly, the minibosses are just bullet sponges. Most of which arrive after several waves of enemies. Sadly, the inventory space can only be upgraded via story element and even after that, it never feels like you have enough ammo to properly dispose of these minibosses on the harder difficulties which would make the encounters impossible since they're resistant to melee and will immediately counter and one-shot you. Finally, there eventually comes a point when you'll be sneaking around to avoid enemies and there will be a scripted event for a fence to unceremoniously come falling apart, alerting every enemy within 20 miles of your exact position, even if you're nowhere near the fence. These types of events become somewhat common and actually almost made me abandon the game entirely. It's a cheap way to make stealth portions difficult and it doesn't make a difference if you try to run since every enemy in this game will easily outpace you. This game would not be as bad if it wasn't almost identical to Dead Space in every way. At every turn I found myself comparing this game to Dead Space and it is NOT better in any way besides sweat graphics and occasional movement animations (aside from the atrocious pick up animation of crouching and sweeping your arm). As of now, as the game is, I would recommend people NOT play this. It's not a good game but it has the potential to be if they are able to fix these issues.

This game has a bit in it for everyone. The only things that were missing for me were more indoor systems that you could "enter" and explore in the wild and more trainer battles. The lack of random encounters is super refreshing and, when you do encounter pokemon or trainers it's nice to do battle exactly where you encountered them instead of cutting away to a battle screen. All those things aside, this game successfully managed to have multiple different way to play while making each way fleshed out and fun in their own ways. I'd love to see these ideas expanded upon at some point! This game is easily the best Pokemon game I've played! The story is great and the final encounter in the main story is one everyone will remember for being brutally difficult but rewarding and just downright spine tingling! The music and the secret twist reveal set the mood perfectly. You couldn't have done that encounter better, Game Freak, kudos! Edit: I completely forgot to mention the Pokedex entries. To fill out your Pokedex entries, you have to complete tasks by interacting with that Pokemon (either with it on your team, with it in battle, or with it in the wild) to accrue research points. You need 10 to finish an entry. Though the objectives for each entry weren't especially unique, it provided players with the opportunity to experience different Pokemon they may have otherwise just ignored. Super unique idea that ended up working out great. However, in the rather long tutorial (which I recommend you do not skip), the way the Pokedex works isn't touched on well enough, in my opinion. Also, Game Freak seems to be pushing out patches for bugs, post launch, so it's really heartening to see them putting care in their game even after launch--especially so soon after!

I have had to edit my comment 3 times now because just thinking about this movie makes me upset. With calm mind, I would warn anyone from seeing this movie, it is easily the worst movie I've ever seen. Usually when you spend money to see a movie in the theater, you feel obligated to stay because you don't want to see your money go to waste. My money was wasted the moment I bought the tickets. Sadly, I only realized this after an hour through. The movie had potential but the characters were written to be hollowed out write-ins for uninspired character archetypes. There are parts of this film that take you completely out of the story with how you think "oh, come on now". Every side character is disposable and lives for the express purpose of acting as a bad foil for "character development". Of course, I would have no problem with this if the characters actually did develop through the movie. But, that's right, the serious squinting military man is just that, the idiotic conspiracy theorist is just that, the renegade son never changes. None of those characters sucked as much as the two protagonists who feel like empty shells meant for the viewer to fit themselves into...if only there was something that made the viewers want to do that. Do not give this movie any high scores if you haven't seen it. This movie is really bad and you contribute to making more bad movies by rewarding this kind of behavior.

Metroid fans will rejoice. The areas in the game are very well detailed and, in classic Metroid style, exploration opens up with every upgrade you get to your suit. The story is a continuation of Fusion and how terrible the X parasite is. That said, there are some pretty dread-inducing moments in the game where pretty much nothing you can do can save yourself from certain doom. I'll admit I haven't beaten the game just yet and that's for the sole reason that I don't want it to end. This game will consume hours before you even realize how long you've been playing it. It brought me back to my childhood, playing Metroid Fusion on my GBA and the late nights roaming around the space station, looking for the next area to explore. Metroid Dread is a fantastic successor and I can easily see it becoming a classic.