Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger There's definitely something to be said for gameplay variety as well, which is the flip side of the discussion. One of the issues I have with certain well-reviewed games is that they have very little gameplay variety to them. And I guess, technically, the same is true of SotC. On the other hand, SotC does a great job of varying the encounters so that they feel distinct, even though you're technically just engaging in the same activity over and over. If it was much longer, the balance would still break down (and it definitely did when I was grinding for my trophies), but, as it stands, the design is JUST right for a 5 - 8 hour game (on your first playthrough, anyway; my hard mode run speedrun with the unlockable time trial gear equipped scarcely lasted more than two hours!). It can be an issue with longer games, though. It was definitely one of my (many) issues with Bloodborne, for example. The game is 40+ hours of largely plotless gameplay where you wander around abandoned streets and kills baddies and bosses. That was stripped down to its essential elements, but, IMO, a game that long would do well with SOME variety in gameplay. Plotless gameplay where you wander around and kill baddies and bosses works out great in eight hour Castlevania games, however.

I suppose I can't blame them. If some dude with a malicious glint in his eye and a weapon showed up on my doorstep, I'd probably attack him too! There are also a fair number of colossi that don't even really... attack you. They can still hurt you, but that's more a consequence of them freaking out and trying to escape the scary little man trying to kill them.

There is actually one colossus that pretty much everyone feels bad after killing. It's the smallest of the bunch, just scarcely bigger than your character. In that battle, you're unable to damage it until you expose the furred body underneath its rock-hard armor. Once you discover it's afraid of fire, you stomp after it with a lit torch and make it fall from a cliff. The fall from the cliff breaks its armor and reveals its back, which, since it's so small, is one big weak spot. So you have to jump on top of the thing and stab it to death through the back.

This is all pretty uncomfortably brutal on its own, but what really seals the deal is the way the poor thing cowers and swipes out at you when you're using the torch to drive it toward the cliff. Especially in the PS4 release, since the colossi are so expressive and well-animated. They perfectly captured the body language of a terrified animal.

The really interesting thing about the game, which it barely even tries to hide, is that you're playing a villain. His motivations are sympathetic, of course, but that doesn't excuse him slaughtering the colossi and releasing a demon that was clearly a threat to the world.

I don't think I mentioned this, but there's clearly a bond between Wander and his horse as well. It's the only actual emotional bond you have with another living thing in the game, so when you think your horse has died after falling from a cliff, it's a pretty devastating sequence. I wonder if this human/animal connection resonated enough with people that it inspired The Last Guardian to focus on that sort of bond entirely?

I really need to play that game. I have no doubt it'll rip my heart out, but it looks fantastic.

Xbox series X review by MC Noisy

For my biffday Mrs Noisy bought me a flipping Xbox series X. Now not only was that amazing after being a big fan of the original and the 360, but I had no idea. Gobsmacked.

I have been hearing loads about the games. I couldn't wait to try Forza Horizon and Aeroplane simulator. Haven't heard much about the console itself so here's my review.

Boxing 🥊

Stunning boxing in comparison to my PS5 were I ripped the box and bits fell out. Well thought out and looked spiffing. Unboxing was easy apart from the shielded up celotape rings, impenetrable to the human body. I needed some scissors for that. All in all a big W for Xbox.

The Beginning - Beauty is only skin deep

After that I started to log in and up. Get my game on! But Bill Gates slapped me right in the snoz. It was as if I had attempted to book a family holiday in Butlins on the Pontins website. Super long and unnecessary intro to the current Xbox infrastructure. The online intro found my old account via my Hotmail email which was super cool. However I think this has caused more issues than it was worth, possibly causing glitches I will come on to later. Everything took ages and wasn't snappy like the PS5. Loading circles dominated my first 2 hours with the new console. It has major problems here, trying to set a passcode didn't work initially - in fact other than finding my account I don't think anything I deselected for data and selected for preferences worked. It was such a let down. But struggling onward I got it working. Big L for Xbox

The console and controller - Plastic fantastic poor

The console looks great. Lovely infact. Yes it's just a black box with holes in the top but it's visually appealing. Very quiet so far and I can't praise it enough. The controller though is an absolute disgrace. Step back in time and I'm sure the 360 controllers I owned were better. Very plasticky and weak feeling. I've had issues with moving menus and selecting letters, it's not accurate enough. Compared to my DS4s or Dualsense it's a massive drop off. It even uses, now wait for it ...... Batteries??? In 2022!!!! I think MS know most people will buy an elite at some point as the base controller is rubbish. Microsoft deserve props for the console but penny pinching on the controller is absurd.

The End of the Beginning - Subscription addiction

I'm not going to labour on about Xbox as I haven't played it enough. Forza Horizon is boss, a little too cool kid hyper for me, but I can understand it's critical acclaim. It's pure fun with a shed ton of things to do. After playing FH, it's not a system seller for me and I can easily put it down but it is great and worth a go.

I'm signed up to Xbox ultimate for 6 months and have a load of games to get through. The big elephant in the room is Gamepass. It's been hyped to heaven and back, mostly by Pushsquare. It's basically PS Now with day 1 releases for Xbox exclusives. Time will tell how great this service will be, I personally will get my fill this year before prices head north. As a newbie it's great, I can find a lot of games I actually want to play (around 20 of them) so it's amazing value for now. That may not be the same case for the MS faithful who've already played Gears 5 and Ori.

@themcnoisy Interesting review. Sorry to hear you didn't like the controller. I actually just bought a Series controller recently for my PC and have been rather impressed with it, aside from the insanely loud D-Pad clicking and the bizarrely concave analog sticks. I actually don't mind the batteries, since it gives me more control over how long I can play, and makes the controller itself more future-proof. And if it's anything like the 360 controller, it'll last a long time on a set of batteries. Although, for someone like yourself, investing in rechargeable batteries might be a better idea.

For context, I consider the OG Xbox's Duke to be the worst first-party controller ever released, and I dislike the 360 controller enough that I haven't played mine in years, despite there being a number of games I'd like to play.

@themcnoisy Great review! I'm surprised that you haven't tried out Quick Resume yet since it's one of the more unique features on the Series X. Being able to have multiple games open at the same time genuinely sounds very appealing and I've seen a lot of people speak fondly of this feature.

In terms of batteries, I have to agree with @Ralizah that it's better to have the choice of using either regular batteries or rechargeable ones rather than force you with rechargeable ones like we see on the PlayStation side. I've been able to enjoy so many games on my 360 and One without having to frequently charge the controller because the batteries last for so long, while right now I'm playing Mass Effect Andromeda on PS4 and I have to constantly charge my DualShock 4.

Game Pass is great and I'm glad that you're enjoying the service. One thing I highly recommend you trying out (as long as you have fast internet and a wired connection) is Xbox Cloud Gaming. I know a lot of people prefer to download their games, but I find Cloud Gaming along with Game Pass to be a great combination since it becomes so easy to sample games without having to wait for them to be downloaded. Not to mention that you don't have to worry about constant updates/patches if you're playing through the cloud. It's the closest thing you're going to get to an old school experience of being able to get a game and play it instantly on your system. Just like the good old days without installs/downloads and patches. And there's no latency at all as long as you have a good internet connection. I was able to finish both Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite through Cloud Gaming. The only issue is that the image will refresh sometimes, particularly during cut-scenes, but other than that it works surprisingly really good.

I also recommend following some channels, like @ Xbox on Twitter or Push Square's sister site Pure Xbox in order to find out when and what new games are being added to Game Pass. I personally look forward to these updates all the time because it's always exciting to see what new games are being added.

@Ralizah @RogerRoger @LtSarge thanks for the encouragement peeps. I've tried a few things since the review. Aeroplane simulator is one, and by Jove what a nightmare. The control binds are way difficult to remember. Awesome kit though, flew from my house to work yesterday and crashed on the forecourt ROFL. So very impressed you can do that, even though Liverpool looks completely different. My house is on point though!

@themcnoisy See if you can try flying through Tower Bridge, I ended up clipping the wires with my wing and landing upside down in the middle of traffic 😂

@RogerRoger Thanks for reading and sorry for the late follow-up. I also like how Drake's Fortune has a very simple story, with a sole focus from the very beginning. In stark contrast, Uncharted 2's narrative felt like each segment just haphazardly followed on from the next. I thought the long train sequence was the end of the game but as it turns out, it's just the halfway point.

I understand your point about it being more important to get the protagonists right-- which they most definitely did. But I still felt like having unmemorable and uninteresting villains dropped the emotional impact of something like that final battle onboard the ship.

About the supernatural elements, I certainly preferred how the first game handled it compared to the second and I felt the zombie-like Descendents were more fun to face than Shambala guardians.

I think the boring platforming is to do with this being NaughtyDog's first crack at the mechanic. I liked how Uncharted 4 brought in new tools, especially the grappling hook. But even in that game, I wish they used them more. And the piton was introduced way too late for it to have any meaningful prolonged use.

As its own thing, driving the jetski was fun. But in tandem with shooting while driving it, not so much for me.

@Kidfried

"And with regards to dog cruelty and such, I hate that as well, but so far it hasn't put me off playing a game that I'm interested in. I also really dislike that in so many video games wild animals will attack you on sight, something they'd normally never do."

Depends how realistic it is and how it's treated, I think. A lot of games still use animals as generic enemies that provide resources and XP for your character, so it's easy to not think twice about their inclusion in most games. Hunting turns my stomach IRL, but I've never had an issue hunting in Far Cry 4, or killing pack of wolves/coyotes/rats/whatever in most RPGs.

ND deliberately made every aspect of TLOU Part II as realistic and upsetting as possible, and that includes the way dogs are integrated into the game.

It's not an issue most of the time for me unless a game goes out of its way to be unpleasant about it.

Your point about animals being painted as the aggressors definitely isn't untrue, but I think that is a reflection of the way the majority of video games have structured themselves around mindless acts of violence and killing. As a medium, video games have grown and become more complex and attempt approaching more ambitious narratives and themes, but, when the times come to actually put hand to controller, you're usually just wandering around looking for people or animals to murder.

@RogerRoger There are definitely games that put more thought into the range of activities they offer, and then samey Ubisoft-esque game design where they toss activities at the player so they have checklists to tick off, but I'm not sure the distinction is always that clear. I think a lot of it comes down to how organically the game integrates side-activities into the broader experience.

One of the things I really like about SotC is how well it uses intelligent environmental design and visual cues to communicate to players how to tackle its frequently surprisingly complex puzzle-battle mechanics. On paper, the way you kill a lot of these colossi seem like they should be difficult to figure out, but the experience of actually playing it usually invisibly nudges you toward the solution you're looking for. With a few exceptions. There was at least one colossus battle where I thought: "How the hell would a new player ever figure this out on their own?"

@RogerRoger Funny how this article should pop up during our discussion.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/01/dying-light-2-takes-5...

Gleefully gloating about the sheer number of hours their game will burn off your total lifespan, as if that's an accomplishment on its own.

So, there's a colossus near the end of the game that's difficult to figure out how to even go about damaging, because he has no fur on the bottom half the climb, there are no objects to hide behind or interact with, and any higher ground is out of reach of your jumps. Through trial and error, one discovers that if you taunt the colossus to try and step on you and then jump out of the way, he'll end up raising a piece of concrete that you can quickly clamber up to reach a higher surface. After this, you're stuck between a bunch of pillars without any apparent way to climb up. Again, you have to gain his attention and provoke him to swing his weapon at you, which will collapse the pillars, making it where you can climb the rubble to an even higher level. After some platforming, you're supposed to run out to a bridge and provoke him try to attack you one last time, which will cause him to attack the bridge and create an opening where you'll be able to jump down on his torso and begin attacking him.

Even after that, there are more steps to the battle, though, because there's a weak point in the palm of his sword hand. So you have to climb down to his arm, stab a weak point that'll get him to drop the weapon (if you're lucky, you can shave off some time by actually shooting this spot on his arm with an arrow when you first reach higher ground), drop back to the ground, and get him to try and attack you with his fist. When he does this, you have a split second to jump into his hairy palm and attack his final weak point, killing him.

Some of this is drawn from strategies you learn from earlier colossi (several of the colossi require you to bait them to attack before you're able to mount them), but a lot of it doesn't give you adequate visual indicators and is dependent on frustrating trial and error. Trying to bait specific types of attacks also seems heavily dependent on RNG (time trials where you lose because you can't get him to pound the ground during that final segment are rage inducing).

Almost all of the other fights ingeniously combine set design and specific colossus behavior to elicit epiphanies in discerning players as to how to solve the puzzle of reaching and killing them, but this one only seems obvious in retrospect.

@RogerRoger I haven't played the Tomb Raider games, although I have them claimed on the Epic Games Store. If I ever get a PC capable of running games, will definitely try them out.

Wanted to share a review that I wrote a few months ago on my website/blog. Tried something a little bit different with this one. Hope you like it.

The Good, The Bad, And The Improved | Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Review)

With such a great first entry into a brand new series, NaughtyDog had a lot to live up to with Nathan Drake's second outing. They had to keep the core formula that made Uncharted tick while making sure the game feels new and refreshing, rather than a stale copy-paste of the first one.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an amazing second landing for Nathan Drake and the series. With even more action and even more story than the first one, Among Thieves makes its own in an already exceptional franchise.

But as I sat down to review Uncharted 2, I realised just how iterative the game is on its predecessor-- something expected from a sequel. So rather than a comprehensive review, here are the good, the bad, and the improved with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

spoiler warning

The Good And The Improved:

Uncharted is a series defined by its action set-pieces and over the top thrill rides. Uncharted 1: Drake's Fortune started this trend and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves certainly continues it. Long combat sequences are intensified by a wild helicopter fight along a cities rooftops or the arrival of a fifty-ton armoured tank, while banter ensues between Nathan Drake and his compatriot.

In Uncharted 1 I felt as if these set pieces were too basic and similar, like shooting a gun while Elena drives a jeep away from an unrelenting wave of enemies or shooting a gun while Elena drives a boat past clusters of enemies. Uncharted 2 solves these caveats by making sure Nathan Drake is non-static during these sequences.

Take the train sequence from the middle of Uncharted 2. Not only is Nathan Drake constantly moving forward, but he is also jumping, climbing, and taking cover as the game throws one obstacle at you after another. At first, it may be a brute with a massive machine gun or swinging train signals that you have to avoid or even another helicopter. Seriously, this game loves helicopters. And I'm not gonna argue with their choice because Uncharted 2 provides one great adrenaline-pumping experience after another at a consistent pace.

Linearity is something that exists in all Uncharted games. In Uncharted 1 this linearity was flat. Most combat sequences took place in a room or plateau-like area, while actual verticality was reserved for the climbing sections. Uncharted 2 solves this problem by making combat sections of the game much more vertical.

The experience of climbing up a winding hotel staircase while taking on enemies descending from above is unmatched by anything in the first game. In addition, towards the end of the game, there is an entire tower fight, where the player starts from the top and must make their way down while clearing out the building.

This drastically opens up the player's approach to a particular encounter. You can creep your way around and stealthily take out your enemies, and even if you do get spotted, there is loads of room for improvisation. Verticality is something I didn't know I needed until Uncharted 2 gave it to me on a golden platter.

What adds to the cinematic qualities of Uncharted 2's set pieces are the brilliant settings that the game takes place in. From the courtyards of a Turkish museum to the lush jungles of Borneo and a Nepalese city nestled amongst snow-capped Himalayan mountains, every locale of Uncharted 2 strikes a unique chord in NaughtyDog's guitar of environmental design.

While Uncharted 1 was relegated to a monotonous crowd of samey looking tropical forests, Uncharted 2's roster of various locales makes the journey all the more interesting and gives the player a true globetrotting experience.

Uncharted 1 had a pacing issue, both with its guns and its puzzles. Shooting is a core aspect of an Uncharted game. While nowhere near the number and variety of guns found in a looter shooter or any shooting game for that matter, Uncharted still has a small assortment of guns with different uses, whether its a shotgun for close range, an RPG for armoured brutes, or a sniper for far away enemies.

The first game had all these types of guns, but its pacing was off. For around the first three-fourths of the game, the player was given a very small sample of the gun arsenal to use. While it did open up later on, there wasn't enough of the game left to use these guns in. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves perfectly paces its delivery of weapons, while also adding a few more to the arsenal, making the combat in Nathan Drake's second outing more than just a continuation of the first.

The puzzles fall into a similar hole. The first game was rather short on these mind-stimulating activities and overloaded the second half of the game with all of them. Among Thieves rectifies this by improving their pacing, quality, and even lighting.

Uncharted 2's puzzles are well sprinkled throughout the game, perfectly placed to slow down the high-intensity gameplay with some calm and thoughtful moments.

In addition, all of Uncharted 1's puzzles relied on having to move apart or change the orientation of one or more objects/ engravings. In this game, however, the puzzles have some actual variations to them. While these simple styled ones do exist, more complicated and environmental ones were also added, a standout being one where light must be accurately reflected off mirrors and onto the right spot.

A more minor but appreciated improvement to the puzzles was their lighting. In the first game, it was frustratingly hard to see each and every piece of the puzzle properly due to it being too dark. Uncharted 2 fixes that by simply providing more light to the room by having open windows or flame-lit torches.

On the non-gameplay side of the spectrum, Uncharted 2 improves upon the first by providing a captivating and emotional story with actually interesting character relationships and interactions. El Dorado was a horrible centrepiece to Uncharted 1's story. The treasure was anything but iconic and recognizable, a mish-mash of incoherent details and nothing to grab the players attention or interest.

The lost city of Shambhala and the Cintimani stone on the other hand was a nice change to the story. The player now had a genuinely intriguing endpoint to chase after, making each of Nathan Drake's risky and stupid decisions more understandable to the player.

Uncharted 2's villain is now actually recognizable and villainy, unlike the confusing mess that was the trio of bad guys' villainous motives in the first game. Zoran Lazarevíc makes up for his unmemorable name by being the perfect villain for this game. The hardened war criminal feels like a genuine threat to Nathan and his adventuring party. Lazarevíc's search for power remains an underlying theme throughout the game. The motive is cleverly fused with Nathan Drake's own single-minded pursuit of this elusive treasure to create a deep and meaningful narrative that expertly unravels itself at the end.

The game is also just a harder experience than the first one. Enemies deal more damage to the player and come in more numbers, but the abundance of ammo and the game's cover system make sure the player never feels encumbered, while still providing a genuinely challenging experience.

The game's ending is also incredibly satisfying, as we finally see Nate and Elena's relationship come to fruition. The way the first game ended hinted at more things to come in the sequel, but Uncharted 2's beginning felt like a crushing blow to their relationship with the introduction of Chloe and the conspicuous absence of Elena.

Don't be too distraught because everyone's favourite journalist returns around midway through the game, sending everything that the game had built up so far into chaos. As the player continues their search for treasure, the relationship that was seemingly forgotten by the developers comes back into the spotlight, with great writing, character development, and a superb ending.

The Bad:

For everything Uncharted 2 succeeds at, it also does something rather poorly. The introduction of a supernatural element just after the halfway mark brings Uncharted 2 crashing down from the lofty heights that the first half of the game brought it up to.

With the game's story going smoothly and the player's enjoyment at peak levels, the game throws these yeti-like creatures at you, called Shambhala Guardians, seemingly reminding me of the Lycans from Resident Evil Village. While not as supernatural as the zombies of dead Spanish soldiers from the first game, these creatures were not an appreciated addition to the game.

Uncharted works so well as a realistic third-person shooter with treasure rooted in reality, it seems silly that developers would ever add something supernatural to the games. But for how much I hate the supernatural element due to it breaking the combat style and crushing the game's overall realism, I have to give the NaughtyDog credit for weaving this supernatural element into the game's lore, and not randomly dropping it into the game for fanfare or marketing possibilities.

Living up to an already great first game is not an easy task. But Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an exceptional second entry in one of PlayStation's most iconic franchises, building on almost everything that made the first game such a success, while also carving out its own legacy.

NaughtyDog shot for the stars, but Uncharted 2 went above and beyond.

@DominusPlatypus Another solid write-up. These having originally been written for a personal blog actually makes a lot of sense, since they probably took a bit of time to whip up.

Despite not being an active PS fan around the time of Uncharted 2's release (and thus, having no nostalgia for it) and not holding it in as much esteem as a lot of people do, it's still unquestionably the entry that made this series what it is, as it provided the template for future Uncharted games and strayed from the arguably repetitive cover shooter antics of the original game by providing a much needed focus on cinematic set-pieces that keep the player constantly engaged. It also thankfully dropped the amount of time spent interacting with vehicles.

I tend to agree that, as with the first game, the supernatural elements feel sort of gaudy and don't integrate well into the larger world. I don't mind the inclusion of more subdued supernatural elements (Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example), but this game gets rather ridiculous with them by the end. But you're right about them being better integrated into the game. It's not like you're just rolling along nicely with an action-thriller and then, an hour before the end, BOOM: nazi vampires! That was always poorly executed in the original.

And I also liked that the combat was a little more dynamic in this entry thanks to the change in environments, although it arguably didn't get the revamp it really needed until Uncharted 4 (which I get the sense you're going to love, if you haven't already played it, that is).

I hadn't actually noticed any changes to the lighting during puzzle sequences, so that was an interesting observation.

The villain, Zoran, is probably the most generic late-00s action movie antagonist there ever was, but I am glad he worked better for you. As a stock villain meant to keep the plot rolling, he does his job, at least.

I will say, of all the games in this series, I think Uncharted 2 is the most relentlessly paced. It's difficult to even find a stopping place in this game, so you almost consume it like a movie in a couple of long play sessions. Or, at least, that was my experience with it.

Interesting supplementary approach you took with the review, although, IMO, your list of cons is short enough it doesn't even really feel like its own section, distinct from the conclusion. I suppose that's deeper praise than anything you're able to say outright about the game.

@RogerRoger Makes me wish they ported that over to console so I could actually play it (same goes for Uncharted and God of War on there), as I loved Killzone 2 and 3 on PS3. I still have yet to play Killzone Shadow Fall, but that's beside the point.

@RogerRoger Nice review. I haven't even thought about this game for years, but I remember having fun with it when it first came out. The way it effectively rewards skilled play and hitting certain objectives in missions definitely made it a more addictive experience than I would have expected.

Vita games have the same sort of problem as Switch games, where they often look nice on the actual device, but then you export them to your PC and they look about a hundred times worse. I imagine that's particularly true now that Nintendo's newest model is using what is, by all accounts, a particularly attractive OLED display.

I don't know how anyone can play Killzone Mercenary without gyroscopic aiming, frankly. Trying to control a shooter purely with thumbsticks is already somewhat akin to trying to paint with a broom, but then you factor in how... fiddly... the Vita's sticks are, and... yeah, I need my gyro. Why would you need to look at your controller while you're using gyro, though?

Def. agree that touchscreen controls in twitchy shooters are unwelcome, though. Especially that back touchscreen which is, quite frankly, possibly the worst hardware feature I've ever seen on a dedicated gaming device. I actually bought a whole ass grip to put on my Vita just so I'd stop accidentally brushing my fingers against the back and randomly triggering inputs in various games.

I bought the botzone DLC years ago because servers were already not very populated, so I'm a little amazed to hear that anyone is still even playing this online.

@RogerRoger Great review! It's been a while since I played Mercenary, I remember highly enjoying my time with it. I think it's the best FPS on the system and it just holds up so well on a handheld thanks to Vita's dual sticks. But yeah, sadly the campaign isn't that long and the game focuses on replayability a lot so I ended up not playing it that much.

Is this the first time you've played through this game? It's definitely interesting reading people's thoughts about Vita exclusives today because barely anyone is playing these games. They either don't have a Vita, don't care or have already played them. Are you planning on playing more Vita exclusives after this one?

@RogerRoger My bad. Chains of Olympus was actually a PSP game that has since been included in the God of War Collection on PS3. Ghost of Sparta is another PSP game that was part of that collection as well. I'm guessing both can be played on the Vita though as I see gameplay videos of them being played on the Vita.

I will play Shadow Fall at some point this year, if at least for a pallet cleansing at some point since FPS games are good for that. I do have it installed and actually did try it briefly last year, but never had the time to give it a real shot. It was actually one of the first PS4 games I bought too, so it's really strange I never really played it, but I promise that will change this year at some point.

@Ralizah Thank you! From what little I've played of Uncharted 3, it's nice to see the game building on the dynamic combat from Uncharted 2. Considering that I've only finished 1, 2, and 4, I am in agreement that Uncharted 4 does combat the best.

Again, considering the fact that I've only finished 1, 2, and 4, I am once again in agreement that Uncharted 2 is the most relentlessly paced. With all the love Uncharted 2 gets, I think it goes to show how important Uncharted's gameplay is to the overall experience, certainly in my opinion more important than the story.

@RogerRoger If I have enough stuff to say, then I will definitely do an Uncharted 3 review. I played Uncharted 4 before the first three and wrote a review on it in early 2020, but it's pretty poorly written and doesn't cover all aspects of the game. If I replay the game after beating 3, then I might review it again.

Some of my favourite gameplay combat sections in Uncharted 2 were the ones where you fought your way up or down a ruined tower. I really despise the guardians and I'm looking forward to replaying Uncharted 4 because it doesn't have any supernatural nonsense in it.

I agree that Uncharted 2 drags on a bit longer than it should have, but overall I still enjoyed the game a lot. Thanks for reading!

I also read your Killzone: Mercenary review, and while I can't comment on its analysis of the game because I haven't played it, I did find the review enjoyable to read and well written.

On an unrelated note, how can I add pictures to my posts? Thanks!

@RogerRoger Thanks for the help! I think I've understood how to add images. Your instructions were easier to understand than you think. I've watched TheRadBrad's Lost Legacy playthrough on YouTube already, so I may pass on playing that one. Did you take that image yourself in photo mode because it looks great.

@RogerRoger Damn it, I will promise if I want to promise!

Seriously though, not sure why I threw in the promise, but oh well. It will likely be at some point this year though, as like I said earlier, FPS games are good pallet cleansers. The list ahead of it is fairly long though, so who knows when it will be...

Finish my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn
Guardians of the Galaxy
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep
Horizon Forbidden West
Deathloop
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut (2nd playthrough of the game)
Assassin's Creed Valhalla's DLC (never played any of the DLC)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2nd playthrough as well)
Mass Effect 3

I could always squeeze in Killzone Shadow Fall in between something like Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima. Who knows, and kind of who cares right now.

@RogerRoger Ah okay, that's nice. Looking forward to reading your other reviews as well! It's always nice to see how well games have aged after a long time since release. I actually still have one first-party title left to play on my Vita and that's Unit 13 by Zipper Interactive. I did give it a try months ago and found it to be fun albeit a bit too simple for a third-person shooter. It's just too bad that Sony shut down that studio because I would've loved to see more games like this on the Vita from them.