game of the year all years

we're onto page 2, so here's a recap of page 1's (notable) reviews:
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (2015) - Xbone [7.5/10]
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (2017) - 3DS [9/10]
Forza Horizon 2 (2014) - Xbone [8.5/10]
Forza Horizon 2 - Storm Island (2014) - Xbone [7.5/10]
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - Switch [9.5/10]
Tekken 7 (2017) - PS4 [7/10]
Samurai Warriors 4 (2014) - PS4 [9/10]
Wanted: Weapons of Fate (2009) - Xbox 360 [6.5/10]
Dynasty Warriors 8 + Xtreme Legends (2013) - PS4 [9/10]
West of Loathing (2017) - PC [8/10]
Samurai Warriors 4-II (2015) - PS4 [7/10]
Super Mario Odyssey (2017) - Switch [10/10]
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series (2017) - Xbone [8/10]
Forza Horizon 3 (2016) - Xbone [9/10]
Persona 5 (2017) - PS4 [9.5/10]
Forza Horizon 3 - Blizzard Mountain (2016) - Xbone [FUCK/10]
a lot of good scores, which is what you want



Fire Emblem Warriors (2017) - Switch
i am a weak, weak man
i also bought the season pass
because i am a weak, weak man

+ I may complain a lot about this game, but goddamn it is a fucking fun game
+ The list of negatives will be long, so I have to reitterate: this game is REALLY fun
+ The character upgrade system is neato
+ The weapon attribute system makes getting even shitty bronze weapons potentially great
+ The ability to send AI characters somewhere is a GODSEND
+ History Mode is a better version of Hyrule Warriors's Legend Mode, which was the best part of that game
+ Characters have dialogue for team-up attacks with characters they know (they could have skipped this step but I'm glad they didn't)
+ The callback to the opening scene of Awakening made me smile
+ "Oh no Darios we can't kill you you're our friend!!!" Then the evil dragon just fucking kills him anyway I was in stitches
+ I like Lucina's new voice actress better than Laura Bailey
- Hinoka's new voice actress is GODAWFUL
- Tiki's voice actress is awful and she isn't fun to play as in the slightest
- I can't take English-speaking Marth seriously after three Smash Bros. games of his 10/10 Japanese voice
- Cam Clarke's Corrin is not his best role (he's best at hammy characters)
- Can't adjust volume settings until you're like ten minutes in
- Anna's voice narrates the whole game which is really dumb and annoying (even changing it to Chrom or someone is still kind of annoying)
- Upgrading characters' abilities means hearing "WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS"
- "WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS"
- "WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS WILL THIS BE FINE? SUCCESS"
- Or worse because Lucina is actually one of the least annoying people who will talk over your upgrades menu
- The game does that dumb fucking thing where the first level is part of the last level then they tell you how everyone got to that point
- Who the fuck cares about these OCs
- Male OC's voice actor is AWFUL
- Too many Fates/Awakening characters
- No characters from FEs 4-6 or 8-10 (one from 2 and one from 7)
- Celica but not Alm? What?
- Awakening Historical Map level 20 timed attack can kiss my fucking ass
- Historical mode says it'll tell you the restrictions beforehand but it doesn't? (the "restrictions" section is empty, but I'm restricted to just magicians?)
- Have to play Anna's Mementos levels twice in order to get both of them (and there are just too many of them)
- Arena battles suck

This is a fun game burdened by a lot of questionable design decisions, from the obvious to the things that start out okay but grate on you as time goes on. It's not as good as Hyrule Warriors, and I DEFINITELY, D E F I N I T E L Y wouldn't recommend it for $60 over Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete or Samurai Warriors 4 for $20 each.

7.5/10

i'm pretty sure the only games that came out this year that i played are the new Football Manager and Total War and I can't really rate either as I work as a tester for one and in the company that makes the other.

Claybook is fun tho and I played Firewatch and Oxenfree for the first time this year, those both rule

oh and Fire Pro World is fun as heck

that's all i've got

Yakuza 0 (2017) - PS4
Acquired Black Friday 2017 for $30 (¥3,382) from FUCKING GAMESTOP
Ever since the original Yakuza on PS2, I've been meaning to play one of these games. I did some poking around, and Yakuza 0 is, as its name implies, a prequel, and according to the people I've seen talk about it, it's a good place to start. (and it seems like you're meant to play the remake of Yakuza 1 after this one sooooooooo)
Yakuza 0 takes place in 1980s Japan (specifically Tokyo and Osaka [specifically Kabukichō and Dotonbori]), and it's about beating people up until they explode like a money piñata. Also, karaoke and batting cages and bowling and arcade games and pool and darts and cat fights and slot cars and fishing and claw machines and mahjong and shogi and poker and blackjack and roulette and baccarat and hobo dice games and
Oh, the story? It's about the one and only EMPTY LOT

+ You can buy some cool, refreshing Mountain Dew
+ You can beat people up with all kinds of objects found in the environment
+ Majima's third fighting style is pretty fucking sweet
+ The Real Estate Royale is pretty fun, despite the absurd waiting times
+ Get fucking so invested in investing that you don't even notice your old man being beaten up and your secretary being kidnapped in the same room you're in
+ The Cabaret Club Czar is pretty fun, and doesn't have the waiting times
+ The best bowling minigame I've ever played
+ Karaoke is fucking GREAT ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6__C2Ht6M )
+ The telephone club minigame is neato and leads to some funny moments
+ AND each of the three keeper telephone club girls has a unique* karaoke performance and their own videotape (*shared with one of Majima's girls)
+ The shots of Kiryu during the slot car minigame are just 10/10
+ The Great Slot Car Cat Fight of '88
+ The dancing minigame is really fun once you get used to it (and that takes a LONG time)
+ But all the tunes you dance to are sweet original Japanese impressions of American '80s music ( https://youtu.be/U7GeJYdTf5c / https://youtu.be/vUYrv601WBw )
+ A great selection of engaging side missions with very good writing (and there are a good number of them to boot)
+ The side mission where Kiryu becomes a producer was absolutely hilarious
+ And the bizza side mission oh lord
+ CHAPTER 13 THOUGH
+ THAT POST-CREDITS SCENE THOUGH
+ This game includes both New Game+ AND a sick-ass side quests only mode
- No English dub, if you're into that sort of thing
- Quicktime events are a bit too quick (like, I'm still inputting button presses from actual combat and fail the thing)
- The tutorial for Majima's Rolling Snake move DROVE ME UP THE FUCKING WALL (WHY DO THEY HAVE TASERS)
- Pleasure King
- Did the Finance King, in a tense moment, SERIOUSLY just drop a "screw the rules, I have money"?
- ALSO WHY DID THEY JUST LEAVE THE LOADED GUN ON THE TABLE AS THEY WALK AWAY FOR THE BAD GUY TO PICK UP
- There's a side mission where you've got to go fishing but after investing 30,000,000 yen into a good pole, I can 100% confirm none of those creatures live in that river
- The camera angle when casting in Kiryu's fishing minigame is terrible (you can't see the outlines of the fish at all)
- Playing darts is impossible
- Kiryu and Majima have the same exact animations for the dancing minigame; I wish that at least the intro and outro poses were unique
- I do wish that the telephone club girls had more of a tell so it's easier to get all of the unique girls (do we really need three Sakuras?)
- There's no way to tell which videotapes you've seen and which ones you haven't
- There's no way to tell which buildings are available to buy without ramming your face into each and every one
- Unskippable credits
- JESUS FUCK I HAVE SHIT TO DO JUST LET ME SAVE THE FUCKING GAME FOR POST-GAME SHIT SO I CAN TURN THE FUCKING SYSTEM OFF
- WHY IS THERE NO "THIS SHIT IS GOING TO TAKE AN ENTIRE FUCKING HOUR SO SAVE NOW AND COME BACK LATER IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE POST-CREDITS SCENE"
- That's two hours of cutscenes and an hour of gameplay you can't save during

The game tricked me into thinking Kiryu's story wasn't good but DAMN CHAPTER 13 SAVED EVERYTHING
THEN CHAPTER 14 OH MY GOD


Before anyone asks, Reina is the best in-game girl overall, and Haruki is the best of Kiryu's girlfriends (Haruki > Ayaka > Riku), and Yuki is the best of Majima's platinum cabaret club girls (Yuki > Hibiki > Chika > Saki > Mana > Ai).


SO IN THE END
This game is brilliant. The plot starts off like "whatever" and they hook you with all the side stories, minigames, etc. But then, after the side content stops coming in, the main plot KICKS INTO GEAR and everything that's happened connects and hits you right in the feelings and anything that may have seemed "bland" or "petty" suddenly becomes the most "I GOTTA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT" shit ever. If you're not HEAD OVER HEELS in love with this game after chapter 13, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you.
Final playtime after watching the final scene: 99 hours, 13 minutes
10/10
I bought Yakuza Kiwami for $20 off ebay during chapter 6, before the game locked up the 10/10. I hate giving 10/10s, but FUCK DUDE
There is just so much to love here, and I can't wait to play Kiwami. But I'm going to, because I want to give 0 time to settle; time to calm down in my mind.

Kneejerk five best games of 2017:
1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. Yakuza 0
3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
4. Persona 5
5. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Best year for games since 2006, easy. [five best years for games: 2004, 2006, 2003, 2017, 2005]

Forza Horizon 3 - Hot Wheels (2017) - Xbone
Acquired from Xbox Live's Countdown to 2018 sale in the Horizon 3 Expansion Pass for $10.50
You know what Australia was missing? Gigantic orange tracks all over the place. You know those Hot Wheels tracks you had as a kid? Well, now you can drive all over them in videogame form.
They, unfortunately, did not add the Hot Wheels car wash with real soap suds, nor did they add the Hot Wheels volcano. You CAN, however, hold your very own Hot Wheels Screamin' Stunt Jam, and isn't that what we always wanted?

+ The tracks seem to be made out of pre-defined pieces like a real Hot Wheels track
- But that means that if there's a section you have trouble or hate driving on, you're going to see it A LOT
- It's WAY too easy to fall off of the track and pretty much instantly lose the race
- Good luck getting off though when you want to get the barn find or an EXP board on the actual ground
- Too many 90 degree turns in fucking dumb places
- The Twin Mill car is impossible to drive in first-person, due to the small windshield and huge fucking engine right in front of the steering wheel
- Races require you to upgrade your car to S1 or S2 for certain events (I keep my cars all at A for a reason)

Once the novelty of LOOPS and shit wears off, it's just a frustrating experience. I have a headache.
4/10
would not recommend

REVISITED: Mass Effect 2 (2010) - Xbox 360
The Mass Effect trilogy will always be remembered for how it ended. I'm still angry about that, but it's been more than five years now. It's time to saddle back up and play the trilogy again. (except I'm skipping ME1 this time)
I'm going to import my favourite Shepard from ME1, Tyrone. I started an ME2 playthrough with him, but dropped it (because my 360 died), so he's going to get that comeback special.
My first ME1/2 playthroughs were, embarrassingly, as a fucking soldier. I was a boring child. Tyrone, however, is an adept so

Mass Effect 2's greatest flaw as a WRPG is how it pulls you out of what you're doing to do what Tim wants you to do. Once you learn how to get around it and set aside time for his bullshit, it's not so bad, though.
For this playthrough, I am going to give every party member (except Jack) a chance to show me what they can do (except Morinth I guess) and I won't let the fact that I remember hating Miranda and Tali stop me from giving them a fair shake. (fuck Jack though)

Also I had to buy a new 360 controller for this SO ENJOY THIS REVIEW DAMMIT

+ I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel
+ I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel
+ I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel
+ Legit 10/10 characters: Garrus, Wrex, Mordin, Captain Anderson, Niftu Cal, Tupari sports drink vending machine
+ Legit 9.5/10 characters: Zaeed, EDI, Thane, Samara, Legion
+ The game does a good job getting you to care about (most of) your team before the suicide mission
+ The use of space magic helps break up the fact that it's just a bad cover shooter with an RPG story slapped onto it
+ Varied and impressive environments and situations
+ Even if most of them were introduced in ME1, ME2 does a very good job at making the alien species unique and interesting
+ People complain about the planet scanning, but I find the idea of sitting in my spaceship and draining planets of their natural resources to be hilarious
- The cover system is terrible and glitchy
- I cannot keep the bumpers straight in my head; I always press LB when I want to use powers and RB when I want to change weapons
- Arbitrarily not being able to use certain kinds of guns depending on your class sucks
- Getting stuck with the submachine gun seems like a punishment for choosing a non-soldier class (unless you have the Kasumi expansion)
- Despite the assault rifle being so much better than the SMG, it feels dumb and redundant to choose it as your weapon training over the shotgun or sniper rifle
- Honestly, Jacob is just Kaidan but worse (and black)
- Quarians are kind of creepy honestly
- No matter what kind of Shepard you're running, you can't say "what the FUCK Miranda" when she kills Wilson and you can only say "good job" or "whatever ANYWAY"
- "my father designed me to be perfect by giving me buck teeth"
- I really wish that entering a romance just stopped other girls from asking for their own
- You have to talk to Aria in order to recruit Garrus, despite the recruiter being RIGHT THERE and EDI telling you what he's there for
- Seriously, fuck Aria
- Jack
- "JACK IS THE MOST POWERFUL BIOTIC EVER!!!" but she exclusively uses only the worst biotic powers
- Fight against Praetorian in Collector Ship is impossible unless you chose the sniper rifle
- Sound cut out completely during the end of Samara's loyalty mission
- Thane's loyalty mission is terrible (the concept is fine but the mission itself is just bad)
- The dialogue wheel absolutely sucks; small chunks of text can imply one meaning, but the actual line Shepard says goes in an entirely different direction
- More to the point: You never know exactly what you're telling Shepard to say until he says it, which is ridiculous in a game about talking at people
- Thane's loyalty mission has a dialogue option "That's democracy for you"; I read it as bitter and sarcastic, but Shepard's actual line was not at all what I wanted to say
- Mordin's loyalty mission has an investigate option "Effects on Tuchanka"; I read it as a question not a fucking accusation
- Same mission, "You had a crisis of faith"; I read it as a neutral "go on" option, not a "DOCTOR WHO KILLED MILLIONS :'(((((((((((((((("
- In fact, most dialogue options related to the genophage are tinted with "how could you" rather than a neutral tone
- The only reason the collectors can kidnap the crew is because everyone suddenly decided to be retarded at the same time
- "Let's have all the crew members trained in combat all leave the ship at the same time for no good reason"
- Characters like Liara and Captain Anderson don't have any new dialogue after you beat the game
- You never get to buy a Tupari sports drink

In the spoiler is my basic path through the game, not counting basic side quests. I tried as hard as I could to do as much as possible before each TIM quest, which I list as ending each act of the game. This list is more for future me than for the outside observer.
The main reason I got so frustrated with TIM and dropped at least two playthroughs is because I darted straight to Illium because of my hub boner and met the requirements to be forced onto the collector ship right in the middle of Illium. I tried my hardest to make sure I did the collector ship BEFORE Illium to make sure that didn't happen, even if it means I get Thane later in the game than I'd like.

Spoiler:

fruits of my research:

PARTY MEMBER REVIEWS:

Overall, it's a bad cover shooter that immensely benefits from its plot. The importance of story in videogames is debated frequently in this day and age, but a game with an engaging story can overcome ridiculously mediocre gameplay, as Mass Effect 2 demonstrates. (the opposite is also true; as long as the story isn't offensively bad like say fire emblem fates i have no complaints if the gameplay's good)
Honestly, the gameplay is small peanuts compared to this game's true fatal flaw - the dialogue wheel. If I'm playing an RPG where I have to make decisions and build character relationships, I can't afford to be misinterpreting dialogue options. Not being able to see exactly what Shepard will say has made me regret so many dialogue choices I've made. If the game let me see E X A C T L Y what Shepard is going to say before he says it, this game's score would be much higher, as it sits:
8/10
STAY TUNED FOR THE MASS EFFECT 3 REPLAY
(i don't actually remember much of ME3 aside from the ending and i never played any of the DLC shit except Leviathan so it should be interesting)

Yakuza Kiwami (2017) - PS4
Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the original PS2 Yakuza game. Kiwami features redone graphics, rerecorded and retranslated dialogue, new side content, new story content, references to Yakuza 0, and more. The gameplay and world are based heavily on Yakuza 0, which is fine by me.
From what I've seen, fans of the series put Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 2 at the top of the pile. My expectations are high, but I'm not expecting it to be better than 0.

When I played Yakuza 0, I played it every day until I beat it. It took nearly 100 hours of my time to beat that game, but I played the shit out of it until those hours were up because I was engaged. The side content was so brilliant that I plowed straight through it, and by that time, the story had kicked into gear and sucked me in in its place. There was no point where I thought "eh" while thinking about playing it (after I started). I just booted up the game and went to town.
Kiwami is different. The side content isn't as good (barring Majima Everywhere), and the story is just not doing it for me. I hate plots where it's "SMALL GIRL IS THE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY". Having the yakuza tell Majima to kill a blind young woman is intriguing; I wanted to know why. Having Kiryu stumble across a small child who seems to be related to the missing character I just met and don't yet care about just isn't very interesting.
Kiwami does a bad job of making you care about the plot. The only characters that I care about at all are Kiryu, Majima, Kazama, Reina, Date, Shinji, and Nishikiyama (of those, only Date wasn't in Yakuza 0). Like, I want to know why Nishikiyama changed so much between 0 and Kiwami, but WHOOP IT'S LITTLE GIRL TIME
Yumi is set up to be super-important to Kiryu, but it doesn't come across well because all that happened was a small cutscene and a fetch quest for her. Am I supposed to care about her disappearing? Am I supposed to care about the little girl who claims to be her niece? The game hints at a plotline that is far more interesting and connected to the player (if that player played 0 first, which you're meant to do before playing Kiwami), but Kiryu ignores it completely for something I couldn't give less of a shit about. I get that it's a remake of a game from 2005 that didn't originally have a prequel story, but come on. I can't see a fresh player in 2005 giving any more of a shit about Yumi than I do in 2018 after playing 0. If anything, they'd just not care about Nishikiyama either and then what do they have? Nothing, because Majima isn't everywhere in that one.

+ Having all of Kiryu's Y0 fighting styles is very welcome, especially since the Dragon style starts off gimped (for understandable reasons)
+ All the scripted fights against a dozen-plus people are just fun as fuck (especially with Beast style and ESPECIALLY indoors with tables and chairs)
+ Still a lot of minigames and substories to play
+ Substories are still engaging and entertaining; you never know what you'll have to do next
+ I always like endless trading quests
+ A nine-year-old girl asks for help getting a boy a Christmas present and I said to myself "pornography" and lo and behold, you can buy her a pornographic magazine
+ A callback to Y0's cult quest ("the battle of Goroma Jima" got me, hard)
+ Majima Everywhere is so much better than Mr. Shakedown
+ Fighting Majima with all of his Y0 styles is pretty fucking sweet even if it happens all the time
+ All of the Majima Everywhere rank-up missions are 10/10 brilliant
+ Facing Majima in all the minigames is just perfect
+ The new story scenes showing what Nishikiyama did in the ten years Kiryu was in jail are very welcome
+ That fight in the Millennium Tower with all the men in black was pretty sick
+ Okay so it's kind of funny but
- This is the worst intro to a game fucking ever
- Flashback within a flashback within a "ten years before the actual game happens" scene
- Then there's another flashback within that flashback of course
- Running around to get Yumi's ring is absolutely terrible and it makes me REALLY glad I didn't start with this game
- The "little girl is the key to everything" bullshit is fucking terrible
- "MY MOTHER IS ALL I HAVE EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT I'VE NEVER EVEN MET HER BEFORE ))))))))))))):"
- "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T TAKE ME WITH YOU INTO THE NEST OF KILLERS AND CROOKS ))))))))))))):"
- I hate children
- It's gotten to the point where I see a child in a game or TV show or movie and INSTANTLY despise that child with every fibre of my being
- The entire plot can be summed up as "every single person would be 100% better off if Yumi had never been born"
- The boss fight against the Devil May Cry fanboy on the rooftop is TERRIBLE
- The game's plot requires you to assist with ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION (murder, theft, etc. are standard videogame fare but this is a crime I was not prepared to commit)
- FOR NO FUCKING REASON SHE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE FUCKING CARD KIRYU NEEDED
- AND THEN WE HAVE TO BUY IT OFF SOME FUCKING ASSHOLE INSTEAD OF JUST SAYING "I ONLY NEED IT FOR A FEW HOURS BRO"
- FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
- MAJIMA JUST GOT FUCKING SHOT INTO THE SEA AND KIRYU JUST SAYS "i don't have time to worry about him"
- Substories are kind of weak compared to 0
- I should have let the suicidal man jump; he is now trapped in a fate worse than death
- Karaoke's song selection is just plain worse than in 0 (Tonight is the only good song; the new ones are mediocre and the other three are bad remixes)
- Bakamitai and Heartbreak Mermaid return, but the new versions are just plain worse ( 0: https://youtu.be/K490mbjvSnw / Kiwami: https://youtu.be/JYJAYGvJkMk )
- Also X3 SHINE returns but that song sucked to begin with so whatever
- Having to unlock the ability to not be fucked over by the Kiwami system is just retarded (bosses regenerate health but you can use your super move if you unlocked it)
- Only two cabaret club girls and they're far inferior to each of the SIX that Y0 had (Yui is okay I guess but Rina is terrible)
- Well there's a third one but you can only meet up with her once and then she never appears again and it's bullshit
- Also their names (Yui and Rina) are confusingly close to the names of two major characters (Yumi and Reina) [Reina, of course, being the best girl]
+ HOWEVER, having Yui's affection rank up in the same session where I called her a bitch was hilarious
- No way to leave the cabaret club mid-session without straight-up quitting the game from the home menu
- Pocket Circuit is, once again, just "try everything and wait around and hope it works"
- You get bonus upgrade points for eating/drinking everything on a resturant's menu, but you can only get one drink per visit? (was a problem in Y0 as well)
- I wish the full vocal version of 24-Hour Cinderella played in the fight against Everyone's Idol Goro
- Fighting Breaker Majima gets really old because you have to wait forever for him to stop spinning to attack
- As much as I like Majima Everywhere, I wish the unavoidable "Majima joins a fight in progress" or "Majima leaps from a rooftop" events only happened once
- I also wish there were a way to manipulate which Majima spawns (I need a wild Everyone's Idol Goro to get the next upgrade but fuck if I've ever seen one)
- AND FINALLY, I wish that Majima's MesuKing and Pocket Circuit challenges were more frequent, as I also need those for the best upgrades
- Can't do Komaki training when a Majima Everywhere rank-up event is active (why? also how was I supposed to know this?)

points about the ending:

Final playtime: 44 hours, 24 minutes
I played about the same way I did Yakuza 0 (which clocked in at 99 hours, 13 minutes). The storyline is a bit shorter, but the main difference is the lack of a huge minigame like the Real Estate Royale or Cabaret Club Czar.

A good game wrapped in a terrible plot. The best chapters and scenes from the main storyline are the ones that have either nothing or very little to do with the main plot. Majima kidnapping Haruka so he can fight Kiryu again was sweet. The chapter with The Florist's son and Date's daughter was probably the best one in the game, because it had nothing to do with anything. The final chapter was fun, but aside from the final boss, I wasn't interested in any of the characters left.
This game frustrated the shit out of me. They made all the good characters die or job hard (except Majima), and then had you chase after the bad ones for the whole game. Every single thing about the main story's pacing, objectives, and concept is absolutely terrible. There's fun to be had in the gameplay, of course, but the story doesn't even have the decency to be mediocre.
In the end, I can't give this game too bad a score, since the combat, minigames, and substories are truly fun and interesting, and THAT FINAL BOSS FIGHT
It's nowhere near the instant classic Yakuza 0 was, and I absolutely cannot see myself replaying this game when Yakuza 0 exists and also Yakuzas 2-5 + Dead Souls are waiting to be played.
7/10

Yakuza 2 (2008) - PS2
I bought a brand new, sealed copy of this game off ebay for $40 the day after I finished Kiwami. Used copies were going for, like, $38, so I figured spending $2 more wasn't a bad idea. When was the last time you removed the shrink wrap from a PS2 game? Before today, mine must have been GHERT80s.
As a note, that day, I also went to all the pawn shops around, and got Yakuza 3 for $5 (ebay price is around $40) and Yakuza: Dead Souls also for $5 (ebay price is around $16). I also grabbed Yakuza 4 off ebay for $28 (out of fear that after I beat Y3, I'd only find $40 copies or some shit). Yakuza 5 is digital-only, so that one can sit and wait until one of three things happens: a sale (yeah right), I beat Dead Souls, or there's a delisting announcement. (so, to recap: I've done Yakuza 0 and Kiwami, and after that, the order goes 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> Dead Souls -> 5 -> 6; 6 comes out in March)
please localise ishin
i just want to be a samurai

Yakuza 2 was released at the very end of the PS2's life (or even just past the end). I honestly can't remember the last time I bought a new PS2 game. Videogames have been through a lot since then, and while business practices as a whole haven't changed for the better, shit like controls and player convenience have really improved. Honestly, if Yakuza 2 hadn't been far and wide considered the best (or second-best after 0) Yakuza game, I may have just skipped to 3.
The Western cover art of the game is basically a cropped version of the Japanese cover. I guess they thought the dragon symbolism would go over Westerners' heads, and they'd just think it was gay to have a game cover where two shirtless dudes are glaring at eachother. As it sits, the Western Yakuza 2 cover just looks like a worse version of the Western Yakuza 1 cover.

This game's two cities are the same two cities from Yakuza 0, Kamurocho and Sotenbori. It's sad to see that in 18 years, Sotenbori lost two whole generations worth of graphical fidelity

Okay, huge thing:
I'm playing this game on a backward compatible PS3. I went to save and accidentally hit "no don't overwrite", and then I got the message "your Yakuza 2 saves are corrupted want to wipe???"
I was able to save after that, and I looked it up. Apparently, if you back out of saving, your save games will corrupt? The other guy who had this problem was also playing on PS3.
SO BE WARY
AND MAKE SURE YOU DON'T LOSE ALL YOUR GAMETIME

I know I usually put the positives right away but this needed to be gotten out of the way first:

- No karaoke

Okay now we can start properly

+ Combat still feels really good, despite jumping backward two console generations
+ The villain/plot are M U C H better set up with in the original (remember that Nishiki wasn't a well-executed villain until Y0 came out and gave you a reason to care)
+ The focus of the narrative is on the characters who you are actually interested in, unlike the original
+ And even when the plot shifts away, it manages to still be engaging and about other characters you're interested in
+ Kiryu and Sayama's date was C U T E
+ Majima defusing the bomb was fucking amazing
+ The final boss fight is the manliest shit ever
+ What happens after the boss fight is sweet and would have been a perfect way to end the series
+ Silent Night during the credits was perfect
+ I love how nonchalant they are about how it was all a fakeout
+ The game has a feature where if you die to the same bullshit fight over and over you can set just that one fight to easy mode then play on normal afterward
+ The Host Club Adam side story is pretty engaging (and that's especially good because it's really long and I had to keep resetting)
+ Be My Baby was an uh experience
+ Endless trading quests are still my bag (i wish i could give the rapper some batteries though)
+ The Revenge by Proxy side quest was cool (and reminded me to do this year's Progress Haiku)
+ The cabaret club girls are both more numerous and better than in Kiwami (I didn't even meet them all because there are like ten of them)
- The aforementioned save data corruption glitch
- The background noise in Club Sunrise is absolutely unbearable
- I wish there were more save points around town
- Fixed camera angles can be a MOTHERFUCKER at times
- They put one of those FUCKING chair guys I've always hated right around a corner so when he knocks me into the hallway I walk right into his next swing
- The game very noticably spawns and despawns NPCs when the camera angle changes (it's a good trick I guess)
- The quicktime events are WAY too quick (I don't have the reaction time of Jesus Christ Himself dude)
- The cabaret club ownership thing isn't fun it's just annoying (and the customers have a fetish for leopard-print carpets)
- AND THEY DON'T EVEN LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL CACTII I BOUGHT
- Basically, if I hadn't lost my saves, I would have reloaded a save from before I ever started the stupid-ass cabaret club shit (Yakuza 0's was MILES better thankfully)
- The Il Yu Jin side mission is terrible and pretty much impossible with the fixed camera angles
- We really didn't need an update on the Florist's son (and we DEFINITELY didn't need to help him sort out his problems)
- The producer shit at the beginning of chapter 13 was unnecessary and poorly-written
- How the fuck couldn't Kiryu see through Sayama's obvious lies in chapter 15?
- I've given it some serious thought, and I've come to the realisation that I hate women
- HAYASHI IS THE WORST FUCKING BOSS FIGHT IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES
- nearly made me drop the entire fucking game
- FUCK
- No sorry I was wrong
- DAEJIN KIM IS THE WORST FUCKING BOSS FIGHT IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES
- nearly made me drop the entire fucking game
- FUCK
- Final boss fight entirely boils down to a fucking quicktime event at the end
- IF YOU DON'T PRESS TRIANGLE WITHIN 0.000012 PICOSECONDS YOU LOSE THE ENTIRE FINAL BOSS FIGHT (((((((((((((:

A solid 8.5/10 brought down by two Godawful boss fights and A FUCKING QUICKTIME EVENT THAT DECIDES THE ENTIRE OUTCOME OF THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT
7/10
I hope the remake fixes that shit. I can forgive them for cutting an entire city kind of if they fix this fucking garbage.

Series in perspective so far:
Yakuza 0: Brilliant 10/10 game must-play for PS4 owners
Yakuza Kiwami: Nothing wrong with the gameplay, but story doesn't follow the portion of the cast it needs to follow, leading to a frustrating experience
Yakuza 2: Nothing wrong with the story, but has two Godawful boss fights and the final boss hinges on a fucking quicktime event, leading to a frustrating experience

Dynasty Warriors 9 (2018) - PS4
People have long complained that the Dynasty Warriors series has been """stale""" since the PS2 era. While I personally love these games, I can see that they're pretty repetitive.
DW9 takes the 83 characters from DW8E and adds a few more to get to 90 total, and throws them into an all-new open world version of China. They've also redone the combat system to be more involved, and added more battles that weren't DW staples yet.

Of course, all of this has come at a cost. While DW8 did away with clones and made every character unique (and DW8E went even further and took some boring characters like Sun Quan and Liu Shan and gave them better weapons), DW9 has a shitload of clones. Characters like Sun Ce and Yue Jin are denied their good personal weapons and given shitty ones.
A small memorial:
R.I.P. Sun Ce's tonfas
R.I.P. Huang Gai's boat
R.I.P. Yue Jin's hook blades
R.I.P. Li Dian's pizza cutter
R.I.P. Guo Jia's pool cue
R.I.P. Guo Huai's cannon
R.I.P. Liu Shan's bench
R.I.P. Xu Shu's hooked dagger
R.I.P. the rest

Still, though, this game looks pretty sweet if you ignore all the bad parts

I'd like a moment of silence here for Chen Dao, whose real life accomplishments were just given to Zhao Yun in ROTK and everything based on it. I know I'd sure as shit be pissed if that happened to me.







The way the game's progression works is there are 13 chapters, and each character's story takes place inside these chapters. Some are longer than others, due to how the historical lives varied in length. Each character has unique interactions and scenes, as well as a unique ending. Each faction has different battles in the chapters, naturally.
Your choices at the start are limited to three, who are, of course, Sun Jian, Cao Cao, and Liu Bei. They wanted you to always start with one of the main faction leaders, and I don't mind that decision at all. Maybe because Sun Jian is my favourite. The character unlock system is weird and hard to explain but it makes sense if it happens to you.
One thing to note is that you have to start each story at its beginning. For example, if you start with Sun Jian and complete his story (which lasts two chapters), you can't just start with Cheng Pu, Huang Gai, or Han Dang in chapter 3, since their stories start in chapter 1. You can, however, start with Sun Ce, SSX, or Sun Quan in chapter 3, since their stories start there.
I haven't played as all 90 characters, since a lot of them are S H I T (e.g. peach brothers), but I've done a good variety, I think. Here's a list [Character (faction, chapter #-#)]
Sun Jian (Wu, chapter 1-2); Zhang Jiao (Other, chapter 1); Cao Cao (Wei, chapter 1-8); Pang De (Wei, chapter 8-9); Sun Ce (Wu, chapter 3-4); Fa Zheng (Shu, chapter 7-8);  Xu Sheng (Wu, chapter 5-10); Guan Xing (Shu, chapter 9-11); Zhang Chunhua (Jin, chapter 10-12); Zhong Hui (Jin, chapter 12-13)

+ The pre-chapter intro sequences look great
+ I really like how they show members of the different factions being friends and shit
+ Cao Cao's ending hit me right in the feelings
+ The Chibi fire attack scene was great
+ The new characters for Wei and Wu are great additions
+ On-disc audio tracks in English, Japanese, and Chinese
+ They didn't remove free mode like they apparently did in Warriors All-Stars
+ They kept Lianshi's duckhooks at least
+ Also her boobs
+ Some characters benefitted from having their shitty weapon removed (Sima Yi, Deng Ai, Zhong Hui, Zhuge Dan, Cao Cao, Cai Wenji, Lu Xun, and ESPECIALLY Zhu Ran)
+ AS MUCH AS I HATE TO SAY IT, Sun Ce's new weapon is kind of sweet
+ A lot of truly great character designs (they gave Lu Xun his sweet hat back and Zhu Ran no longer looks like a faggot)
+ Boat battles are hilariously terrible
+ There are all kinds of sub-battles that you can do to make the main battle easier, or you can just ignore them if you want
- But doing all of these makes the main battle WAY too easy (example: the battle against Dong Zhuo at Luoyang was level 5 when I did it, but my character was level 30)
- Boat battles are hilariously terrible
- Some characters' endings don't provide closure and don't make sense as "the end" if you don't already know the history (Sun Jian's ending comes to mind)
- I wish there was a bit more personalisation to each character's campaign (e.g. Ma Chao and Ma Dai should have special dialogue if you're playing as Pang De)
- Absolutely disgusting graphical pop-in
- THE FUCKING CONSTANT CRICKET NOISES IN ANY WOODED AREA ARE LIKE NAILS ON A FUCKING CHALKBOARD
- The English voice acting is T E R R I B L E
- Like, this may be the single worst English dub in the history of English dubs
- THERE IS A FUCKING ARROW IN THE KNEE JOKE
- The Wan Castle mission is confusing and the GPS doesn't fucking work (go straight through this impassable barrier!!!)
- Forming reinforcements is the worst mission fucking ever because they give you no help but just say "no bro you're an idiot try again"
- The Wu mission where Zhou Yu wants to kill Liu Bei is just nonsensically badly written and thought-out
- Still no levels based on Jin's conquest of Wu

LET'S TALK ABOUT WAN CASTLE FOR A MOMENT
After you escape, there are a bunch of objectives you can do to make busting in and "saving" Dian Wei easier. There is a time limit (Dian Wei's health); if he dies, it's game over. However, at the beginning and end of every objective, there's a checkpoint, so you start again from the last checkpoint you hit. Restarting from a checkpoint also refills Dian Wei's health. So, uh, what's the point? I got two game overs like this, and I was completing the objectives at a pretty good pace, I thought.

bitching about the roster:

I enjoyed this game immensely. It's a real shame that it suffers from a poor framerate, bad draw distance, and a bunch of weird (but not critical) glitches. It's also a shame those damn voice actors decided to strike.
On the other hand, it's a joy to just dive into a horde of enemies and slaughter them all while your friends call you a true warrior of the three kingdoms. I've only completed nine of the NINETY stories in this game, so I'm sure I'll return to it a bunch. Even though all the stories within a faction are pretty much the same, I'm still looking forward to playing it as different people.
8/10
High hopes for DW10.

Yakuza 3 (2010) - PS3
Everyone says that this is the worst game in the series. I was left slightly dissatisfied after Kiwami and 2, for strangely opposite reasons. I'm sure that I would have absolutely hated the original PS2 version of Yakuza 1.
I'm still giving this game a chance, and not just because I already own it. I'm optimistic about this one, which never happens.

This game seems to be the one where they hit their stride in making the side content an incredible mixed bag in the best possible way. I don't mean "mixed bag" as in "some's great some's shit", but rather "some's normal and expected and some's goofy and insanely memorable". The fact that you never really know which you're getting into until you start the mission is what makes it so good.
Then there's the new "revelation" system (which apparently is a mainstay through Yakuza 5), where some crazy shit happens and you take some pictures to learn a new move. They're fucking ridiculous. Here's the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuuHkFmCwSA

The boxart got fucked again when it was brought overseas. https://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2010/01/yakuz3beforeandafter.jpg
I really don't see why they didn't go with the Japanese one this time. It's a really cool image that's used on the PS3 menu anyway.

+ The beach town setting in Okinawa is a very welcome bit of variety
+ Kiryu's Hawaiian shirt is perfect
+ The new main characters of the game in Ryukyu are likable pretty quickly
+ I really like the slice of life scenes with the orphanage kids
+ The Kanda boss fight is legit one of the best yet in the series
+ Majima's pink dumptruck holy shit
+ That after-credits scene though
+ Substories hit their stride in this game
+ THE ICE CREAM SUBSTORY HAD MY HEART FUCKING POUNDING
+ Murder mystery substory
+ The fight against Gohren on the Millennium Tower was SICK
- Game doesn't pause if your controller dies/shuts itself off while plugged in because the PS3 is a piece of shit
- There's a scene at the beginning where you can pay your respects to Nishikiyama, Kazama, Terada, and Yumi, but not Reina, Ryuji, Shinji, and Kawara
- They just write Sayama out in a terrible way then her bio updates later on saying she's hooked up with a white piggu American and gotten fat
- I liked it better in Yakuza 2 and 0 when the substory list was divided by city
- The game doesn't give you enough information when certain things can only be done at night
- You can start the Cafe Alps murder mystery in chapter 9, but you have to wait until nighttime to do anything after that and nighttime isn't until chapter 12
- The "Convenient Stakeout" substory is just bad; all three people make the "putting thing in bag" motion and I get in trouble for accusing the first and last ones

One thing I should mention is that the western version of the game cuts a decent amount of content from the Japanese version. One thing notably cut was the hostess clubs in Ryukyu and Kamurocho (which were in the western Yakuza 2 as a note). The girls are still present in-game, and show up at Smile Burger sequentially. You can take them on two (and only two) dates, then you do their final mission and have carnal relations, and then they send you a text message and you can never see them again.
Now, I enjoyed the cabaret clubs in Yakuza 2 (aside from the one you managed yourself, which is a different animal altogether), but part of me kind of likes this. There were seven girls in Yakuza 2, and I only completed the stories of two (one in Sotenbori and one in Kamurocho). In Yakuza 3, there are a grand total of NINE cabaret club girls, and they all have a unique karaoke performance. There's pretty much zero chance I'd do all of them, so this way, I got to do all of their karaoke minigames. It's not ideal, I suppose, but, in the end, I don't really care too much. The cabaret clubs are in most of these games anyway.

Final scores:
Yakuza 0: 10/10
Yakuza Kiwami: 7.5/10
Yakuza 2: 7.5/10
Yakuza 3 was a solid 9/10 until chapter 11. Unfortunately, I have to instead give it a
10/10

Yakuza 4 (2011) - PS3
The fourth entry in the series, as you can see by the name, and the fifth one I will be playing. I have high expectations for this one, which may not be a good thing. The two games I had high expectations for (Kiwami and 2) were 7/10s. The two games I had middling expectations for (0 and 3) were 10/10s. oops
While Yakuza 2 and 3 added new cities alongside Kamurocho for variety, Yakuza 4 instead focuses solely on Kamurocho. The variety this time comes from the fact that, for the first time in the series, you don't just control Kiryu. Yakuza 4 features not one, not two, not three, but FOUR protagonists, each with their own unique fighting styles, substories, karaoke performances, and exclusive minigame. Joining our old friend Kiryu are Akiyama, Saejima, and the other guy
Kiryu, of course, is the protagonist (or a protagonist) of every Yakuza game to date, ending with the upcoming 6. Akiyama would return as a protagonist of Yakuza Dead Souls and 5. Saejima was referenced in Yakuza 0 (due to being important to Majima's story), and would return as a protagonist in Yakuza 5. Tanimura isn't ever playable again.
For the first time, the western cover of Yakuza 4 actually looks at least equal to the Japanese one.

I'm going to divide this review into categories to make it easier to read.

GENERAL:
+ They've finally added more taxis around Kamurocho to make getting around easier
+ Restaurants finally have little checkmarks next to what you've already eaten to make getting the completion points easier
+ AND you can order more than one thing at a time AND it tells you how much it will heal making healing so much easier
+ The new pause menu has a great design and is easy to understand
+ The pause menu tells you which character can do what, which is VERY helpful and necessary
- DOES THE POOL TUTORIAL NEED TO BE UNSKIPPABLE IN EVERY FUCKING GAME IN THIS SERIES
- Daigo goes from being a competent, good character with strong character development to being a spineless retard (Y2/3 Daigo was great; Y4 Daigo is insulting)
- Seriously, all Daigo had to do was say "no fuck off" like he did all throughout Yakuza 3
- The plot is terrible because it runs entirely through Yasuko, the worst character since the last one I hated
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko

i go on like this for a while:

- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko
- Yasuko


AKIYAMA'S STORY:
+ Akiyama is a very likable character who feels very different from Kiryu in both personality and gameplay
+ Akiyama's substories help to strengthen the idea that he's been around doing this since before Yakuza 2
+ The Shiobara substory chain is really well-done, especially the ending
+ That fake Akiyama substory oh dear god
+ Akiyama and Hana have pretty entertaining interactions (plus their karaoke duet is sublime)
+ The hostess club manager minigame is better than in Yakuza 2,
- but that isn't really saying much of anything; it suffers from a lack of clarity and is absolutely UNBEARABLE without a guide
- The hostess club manager minigame is so fucking monotonous I cannot stress this enough
- Some of the cutscenes in this section drag on for a bit too long (e.g. the first one with Kido and the first one with Daigo, and anything with Yasuko)
- They say that the cops will be watching Sky Finance, but where are they when the yakuza assault Hana and kidnap Kido?
- While Pure Love in Kamurocho is a brilliant song, I wish that Akiyama had his own solo karaoke song

SAEJIMA'S STORY:
+ Saejima's fighting style feels strong as fuck but without being slow
+ Saejima's substories do a good job of fleshing out his personality and past
+ They also like to remind you that he's been in jail for 25 years and doesn't know what a CD is
+ That boss fight against Kiryu was hype as fuck
+ The fight against all of Majima's goons in the Millennium Tower was 10/10
+ The way Saejima gets revelations is amazing
+ Yasuko isn't in this chapter
- The fighter training minigame is the most frustrating RNG bullshit fucking ever (OOPS YOUR FIGHTER HAS DECIDED TO FORGET HOW TO PUNCH)
- They arbitrarily make you unable to enter the sewers after you leave them, disallowing you access to the Master's missions and the recycling guy
- In a game all about the side content, blocking off all the fucking side content arbitrarily is fucking bullshit
- The fucking "get seen by a policeman instantly game over" in chapter 4 is bullshit
- Can't go to karaoke

TANIMURA'S STORY:
+ The battles and chase sections at the end of Tanimura's first and second chapters are great
+ People shit on it, but I liked the rubber bullets twist
+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QGF1c4EfE8
+ Tanimura's fighting style is very interesting in the way it relies on heat moves at the ends of combos, which are much easier to pull off than the other three characters
- Unfortunately, this makes the IF7-R minigame impossible as Tanimura, since you can't use heat moves in it
- Tanimura's parry move is USELESS because he takes just as long to recover from using it as the enemy does from being parried
- Doesn't have a karaoke song of his own; can only cheer on the girls
- Yasuko's conversation with Tanimura in the Chinese restaurant is the single most infuriating thing fucking ever
- Chapter 3 is pointlessly short; like they only divided it like that so every character would have four chapters

KIRYU'S STORY:
+ Kiryu's story begins at the orphanage, to remind you of how the last game was better than this one (IN THE HAWAIIAN SHIRT NO LESS)
+ Kiryu starts DECKED OUT with a lot of his Yakuza 3 upgrades pre-purchased
+ I love how they keep adding on to the ramen shop lore of all things
+ The substory with all the colour gang leaders from the original was sweet
+ Master Komaki bitching out Kiryu for not updating his blog hit me in all the right places
+ Master Komaki bitching out Kiryu for only taking the cover of the black book hit me in the same places
+ Kiryu's fucking banter when taking out all the new gangs is just great
+ The hostess club question from Kyoko where it zooms in on Kiryu's face like he's legitimately hurt by her statement is absolutely great
+ Kiryu having to fight both Akiyama and Tanimura at once was fucking sick (wish they'd had more health to be honest)
+ MACHINE GUN KISSU DE JUST FALL IN LOOOOOOOOVE
- Both of the girls Kiryu can sing Pure Love in Kamurocho with are absolutely horrid singers
- Haruka roars out of the gate, reminding me why I absolutely hated her in the first game
- If you get too close to the Millennium Tower in chapter 2, you're automatically taken to chapter 3, where you can't do substories and have to search for YASUKO
- At the beginning of chapter 3, Yasuko reminds everyone why she is THE FUCKING WORST CHARACTER FUCKING EVER
+ At the end of chapter 4, however, Yasuko FUCKING DIES
+ DING FUCKING DONG THE WITCH IS FINALLY DEAD

FINALE:
+ Everyone's money is consolidated, and everyone can access any item put away in a phone booth
+ Can do any substory or whatever, even the ones that can't happen (Akiyama can "reminisce" about the time before Hana left)
+ The optional ultimate boss fight with all four protagonists vs four Amons was great
+ The part where Kiryu and Daigo punch eachother's fists and Kiryu fucking breaks Daigo's hand was sweet
- I wish Daigo had more health to be honest
- Tanimura gets a shit final battle, and it's THE final battle



Let's talk about the story. The key points of the story (Saejima hit, Katsuragi and Sugiuchi, Tanimura Sr., so on) are all fine. Hell, good, even. The problem is that Yasuko exists. She has no relevance to the events, and only exists to be MYSTERIOUS
In every single Yasuko scene, she sits there for five minutes between every sentence she says, all of which amount to nothing more than "I can't tell you ))))):". When she called Tanimura selfish for wanting to avenge his father, when she was KILLING PEOPLE to try and get her brother out of jail, I wanted to huck my controller through the TV. She's a terribly-written character who didn't need to exist for the plot to happen. I also wanted to fucking murder someone after she drugs Date just to escape from New Serena. Yasuko is SUCH A FUCKING GODAWFUL CHARACTER THAT I AM JUST FUCKING ANGRY
FUCK
FIUFGE-JLSL;KDCSUZERH;LKRFG;0-[7JU G
the k key came off my keyboard while i was mashing there
i don't think a videogame character has ever made me this mad before
if she does one more stupid thing, the sheer anger might just make my heart explode
this is legitimately the most angry i've ever been at anything other than real life

Yasuko 4 is an am-
wait oops
Yakuza 4 is an amazing game. They managed to create four characters who are all legitimately fun to play as and feel different from eachother in every way. The substories are absolutely great, and there are a lot of fun side activities.
It's just a shame that one of the characters makes me want to fucking just
I would honestly stab myself repeatedly until I am more stab wound than man, rather than sit through ONE MORE SECOND of Yasuko's BULLSHIT. I cannot stress enough how much I HATED this character. All I wanted to do is strangle her every time I saw her dumb face about to say or do something completely retarded (after five minutes of looking sad of course).
If Yasuko didn't exist, I'd probably be hemming and hawing over whether to give this game a 10/10 or not.
Now I'm struggling to come up with a number score that makes sense for a game with absolutely amazing side content, but a story that is absolutely unbearable due to one character.
fuck it
8/10

Final Fantasy XV (2016) - Xbone
Acquired Black Friday 2017 for $15 from Target
Final Fantasy XV was originally revealed as part of the Fabula Nova Crystalis project, which was like a thousand games all called Final Fantasy XIII. Final Fantasy XIII was eventually released as Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Agito XIII as Type-0, and then Final Fantasy Versus XIII as this.
Versus XIII was meant to be directed by Tetsuya Nomura, best known nowadays for directing the Kingdom Hearts series. Kingdom Hearts III was promised to be developed after Versus XIII came out, but fucking seven years later and Versus XIII was in development hell and FUCK
At E3 2013, Final Fantasy Versus XIII was revealed to have become Final Fantasy XV, and shifted over to a different director. Then there was a Kingdom Hearts III trailer and I legitimately cried I was so happy I'm tearing up just thinking about it
ANYWAY
FFXV took three more years to come out. It got a demo on the Xbox Live marketplace, which I played and did not like at all. My track record with Final Fantasy games is suspect to begin with, anyway. I liked I and VI, but stopped playing them for unknown reasons at some point. I LOVED FFX and to a lesser extent X-2, but I HATED FFXII. FFXIII was a mediocre game that I never finished.
SO WHY THE FUCKING HELL DID I BUY FFXV IF ALL SIGNS POINT TO ME HATING IT

uh

i'll have to get back to you on that one

+ The four main characters are really well-done and have great chemistry
+ I know the "high-level character joins your party for a little bit" thing has been done a million times but I still like it
+ The tutorial is pretty nice actually
+ The combat seems braindead simple, but it's actually pretty fun if you warp around a lot
+ The opening where you're running errands for Cindy is a very good way to get the player used to the game
+ The part where the boat gets on the water bridge(?!) to Altissia was just impressive
+ The final chapter ends the game STRONG (which it desperately needed after chapters 9-13)
+ I love looking through the photos Prompto took every time we camp
+ GodDAMMIT that part at the end where Noctis chooses one picture to take with him and you have to go through all of the ones you saved
+ A good chuck of side quests have unique dialogue after you accept them between the party
+ Getting the chocobos so early is a godsend with how time it saves over just walking everywhere you can't drive
+ It was absolutely ESSENTIAL that they put you at the chocobo farm after you lose the car for a bit so you can do that quest if you haven't already (good game design)
+ The Rock of Ravatogh (volcano) was a really cool (optional) dungeon
+ In fact, all of the optional dungeons are neato and varied (two are forest dungeons but I can forgive that because they're both really short)
- EXCEPT for Costlemark Tower, which is absolutely godawful (the very last bit before the boss, to be exact)
- The midboss for the optional sewer dungeon is harder than the end boss of the dungeon (why though)
- TWENTY-SEVEN GIGABYTES OF UPDATES (PLUS FIVE MORE LATER ON BEFORE I EVEN STARTED THE GAME)
- The sound stops playing if you go to the Xbone's home menu for too long, forcing you to quit out and restart the software
- One time all the NPCs plumb disappeared on me (including the rest of the main party); fixed by saving and reloading
- You can't look at your quests or inventory while in the car (driver or passenger)
- Context-sensitive A button presses are finicky (it says press A to pick up an item, but I press A and I jump)
- If two objects/people you can interact with are too close together, it can be really difficult to get the camera and/or Noctis into position to interact with the right one
- "Activate special overkill mode" and "lock-on and dodge" use the same button combination so I keep wasting it
- They have an FFX radio station but it doesn't have Otherworld? Really? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXDxYIWAT7Y )
- The pier you go to in chapter one should have been much shorter and why the FUCK is side quest man at the far end of it
- Same thing for the light house and Cid + the carrot farm (but at least you can take a chocobo there)
- Accessing Dave's last mission is completely unintuitive; you have to talk to the tipster at the Rock of Ravatogh and ONLY that one and have him fill out the map
- (I did that before the quest became available so I never would have thought to do it again)
- That oracle girl's accent is annoying, especially the child version of her (also it's out of place as fuck no one else here is British in the slightest go home back to Europe)
- Okay, I can accept that we're in medieval fantasy modern-day monarchy America but you've got to COMMIT none of this TEA AND BLOODY SCONES bullshit
- The thing I hate about her is that, even in the flashbacks where she is a child, she speaks like a generic high fantasy "THOU MUST RESTORE THE LIGHT TIS YOUR DESTINY"
- And you know? The orcale's character would work so much better as his MOTHER than his fiance
- "oh no character that the audience has no reason to care about, i am so sad that you are dead"
- Bullshit mandatory stealth section in chapter 6 (the first time where I just quit the game because I wanted to stop playing) [not hard if you use a guide]
- Altissia's layout is really confusing (I'd hate to live there, even setting aside the daemons and evil empire)
- The Leviathan boss was terrible; I had no idea what I was doing but apparently I did a good job?

- Chapter 9:
Chapter 9 is when the game completely loses it. Up until here, the game was just driving around, doing whatever until you ran out of whatever and did some plot shit for a bit.
Chpater 9 takes you to Altissia, which is a shitty city. It's confusing, cramped, hard to navigate, and most of it seems to be inaccessible. So you beeline to the next plotpoint, and oh ho ho
First, the oracle makes a dumb little speech, everyone splits up, and Noctis has to face Leviathan. He gets his shit stomped, and the oracle awakens some weird-ass flying/warping/eighty weapons power. Then you have to defeat Leviathan in a boss fight, and I still don't understand how it worked. I was just staying in one spot, holding attack, and would hit Leviathan like eighty times every time it passed by me harmlessly. Whatever.
Then the oracle dies, and you get a scene where they're dreaming or whatever and Noctis and the oracle are kids again and then the oracle's an adult again and is like "bye bro" and kid Noctis starts crying as the oracle dies and then he turns back into adult Noctis and wakes up after the oracle talks me to sleep about flowers or whatever.
The worst part, however, is when Noctis wakes up. Apparently, Ignis was BLINDED FOR LIFE OFF-SCREEN (on-screen if you have the DLC ((((((: )
They killed off a non-character on-screen, and permanently disfigured a character you've been adventuring with for forty hours OFF-screen. There's not even a record scratch and a freeze frame where he says "yeah that's me; you may be wondering how I got permanently blinded"

- Even though the beginning of chapter 10 says "several weeks later", it's still jarring as fuck to have Gladiolus yelling at Noctis for being mopey about chapter 9
- The Malboro boss fight is fucking dumb; I can get its health down to zero in literal seconds but "we can't beat it we'll have to retreat!!!"
- And the fucking game doesn't tell you which specific spot you need to retreat to so I had to look at two different guides to figure it out
- The survival horror-esque shit in chapter 13 lasts for far too long (I didn't seem to hate it as much as everyone else does though)
- Prompto's entire character twist was basically "i was grown in an evil lab so i myself am the level 7 keycard"



GAME CRASHES:
1. Selecting "train" from a campsite (11 hours in, lost a minute or two of progress)
2. Chocoboing my way around a swampy lake thing (22 hours in, lost maybe ten minutes of progress)

I am going to divide the rating into three parts, because, honestly, there's no other way to do it. The final total score will be the average or whatever.
CHAPTERS 1-8 RATING: 9/10
CHAPTERS 9-13 RATING: 5/10
CHAPTER 14 RATING: 9/10
MEAN AVERAGE RATING: 7.5/10
THE RATING I'LL ACTUALLY GIVE IT: 8/10

YOU WILL LIKE THIS GAME IF YOU ALSO LIKE broad trips and side quests that are little more than "go here and kill/grab thing for me"
YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS GAME IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THOSE THINGS
There are a lot of side quests here, but don't expect more interesting reasons to do them beyond "monsters attacked my van and now it's stranded with my merchandise" or "I want a thing and you can get me a thing badabing". The most interesting side quest after all was said and done, writing and reason-wise, was a big-ass monster that was eating chocobos, which I just realised was also in FFX.

Chapters 1-8 took me 38 hours. Chapters 9-14 took me 8 hours.

OFFICIAL FISHING MINIGAME RANKINGS:
Dynasty Warriors 9 > Persona 5 > Final Fantasy XV > Yakuza series

Batman: The Enemy Within (2017-18) - Xbone
Acquired Black Friday 2017 for $15 from the Xbox Live Store
The sequel to last year's Batman: The Telltale Series. I honestly had a good time with the first one, so when the second was announced, I was on board immediately. The original left a pretty big sequel hook, so you knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it just one year later. As a note, the reason this review is so far after last year's Black Friday is that the series was only on the third episode when I bought it. (unlike the other three games where I just didn't start and/or finish them for a long-ass time due to being distracted by Yakuza and various Warriors games)
some music to set the mood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSaDPc1Cs5U
The first episode is called "The Enigma", so we all know it's about The Riddler. However, we all know right away that the overarching plot is going to be about OUR BOY JOHN, since the first season clearly set him up.

EPISODE ONE:
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS BACK
+ WHOOP WHOOP
+ BRUCE AND OUR BOY JOHN BEST BUDS FOREVER
- It's really jarring when 95% of original characters and generic NPCs made for this game are minorities and/or women
- Every original character in a position of power is a woman; I don't mind you mixing them in, but this is just unnatural and forced
- Government lady is probably the worst character ever
- Lucius's daughter is introduced and then immediately an annoying piece of shit
- Lucius's death is stupid and horribly executed
- What is wrong with calling that lady the "chairman"? "Woman" has the word "man" in it
- Job titles with the word "person" in them will always sound forced and unnatural; by using them, you are equating working women with something forced and unnatural
- Government lady knows Batman is Bruce Wayne ha ha ha such a shocking and not retarded twist (just kidding it is totally retarded)
- No option to have Batman look over his shoulder when government lady says "Bruce Wayne" and be all like "where I don't see him"
- No option to punch government lady (I would also be happy with a kick or a headbutt or maybe a suplex)

Episode one was great when it was about OUR BOY JOHN and pretty good when it was about The Riddler's traps. Every one of the negro woman original characters is absolutely insuffrable. If you want to encourage diversity, start by making your "diverse" characters not terrible.
end of episode:

Spoiler:

EPISODE TWO:
+ TELL ME ABOUT BANE WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MASK
+ LOTTA LOYALTY FOR A HIRED GUN
+ etc.
+ Trucker man is a top-tier bro (R.I.P.) [if he hadn't died, I would have named him Robin then and there]
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS BACK
+ I honestly really liked being able to hang out with OUR BOY JOHN and Harley Quinn as Bruce
+ They finally removed "previously on" and "next time on"
- Why was Lucius's daughter able to access the top secret lab and why the fuck wasn't she fired then and there (why didn't Harley smash her head in)

OFFICIAL LIST OF BATMAN'S BROS: Alfred, Gordon, Lucius (R.I.P.), OUR BOY JOHN, trucker man (R.I.P.), Harley Quinn(?!)
end of episode:

Spoiler:

P.S. - the 5% of players who didn't pinky swear with OUR BOY JOHN are ABSOLUTE SCUM

EPISODE THREE:
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS BACK
+ "I believe in you, John; you show that wall who's boss" had me in stitches
+ The last choice of the episode actually felt meaningful (even though I know I'll be fine) even though I knew instantly what I'd do
- No option to just stop Gordon while he's going on his rant about Bruce Wayne and just take off the damn mask
- I mean, fuck, the theme of the game seems to be "learning to let people in" and who's more trustworthy than Gordon?

OFFICIAL LIST OF BATMAN'S BROS: Alfred, Gordon, Lucius (R.I.P.), OUR BOY JOHN, trucker man (R.I.P.), that one guy (R.I.P.), Catwoman
end of episode:

Spoiler:

EPISODE FOUR:
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS BACK
+ STABBING NIGGAS FOR HIS BOY BATMAN
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS NOW BATMAN'S SIDEKICK
- I wish Bruce had led the "finding OUR BOY JOHN slumped on the desk" scene with "OUR BOY JOHN ARE YOU ALL RIGHT" (because OUR BOY JOHN is a TOP-TIER BRO)

end of episode:

Spoiler:

EPISODE FIVE:
+ OUR BOY JOHN IS BACK
+ THAT ENDING SCENE YO
+ BRUCE AND OUR BOY JOHN BROS FOR LIFE
+ AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME OTHERWISE
- Lucius's daughter is simply too competent; they made her a near-infallible supergenius with a solution to every problem
- We have the evidence, why can't we just fucking arrest her then and there? She's a M U R D E R E R and Batman hates those

end of episode, this time in the order presented:

Spoiler:

GAME CRASHES:
1. As I was trying to start episode 4 for the first time

conclusion:
Out of all the post-The Walking Dead Telltale games, this is the one that I felt the most drive to complete. It is solely because of OUR BOY JOHN, the sole ray of light I had to look forward to after the abysmal ending of the first episode. From episode two onward, however, it's pretty fucking great. I don't know if a season three is even possible after all the shit this one did.

Spoiler:

I may have been engaged the whole way through, but the game still had problems. The final choice seems kind of forced, and there's just a lack of ability to make decisions. There really should have been a way to build your own crew so that Alfred doesn't have to do EVERYTHING. Avesta should have been pegged in as support much quicker, and there really should have been a scene with Catwoman at the end if your choices allowed for it.
In spite of this, I was enthralled with the journey, and hesitantly give this game an
8.5/10

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) - Xbox 360
I bought this game for $5 from a game store that was closing down for good. R.I.P.
This is the first NFS game made by Criterion, best-known for making the Burnout series. I've previously played their second NFS game, Most Wanted 2012, and enjoyed myself. I imagine that this is the same thing in a different city.
Except it's not, because the Most Wanted racers list is replaced by the ability to play as the cops, and it's not open world. I'm okay with this.

+ Can completely and totally 100% customise your controls (the only change I made is to swap handbrake and nitrous to A and X, respectively, but it's still super-nice)
+ Not open world (it's really nice to play a racing game that isn't)
+ The game looks great, and the courses feel varied and fun
+ They start you off with a car you'd actually want to drive (a Porsche, even)
+ Drifting in this game feels really good
+ Drifting actually feels different in wet conditions (slippery)
+ It's pretty satisfying when you use a spike strip or EMP or jammer at the perfect time
- Can't turn on subtitles until AFTER the one-time explanation of every main menu option (GLAD I'M NOT DEAF)
- The helicopter support fucking sucks
- AI drivers seem to be able to shoot the gap in the roadblock every fucking time (why is there even a car-wide gap in the roadblock doesn't that defeat the purpose)
- Interceptor missions get REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING
- The best cop missions are the hot pursuit missions and they're the least common for whatever reason
- The race AI feels like it has too much rubberbanding, and that you yourself don't get any at all
- The shortcuts are really hard to see until it's too late, even when you know they're there
- The camera angles when selecting your paint job are terrible (HOW HARD IS IT TO GET A FULL SIDE VIEW)
- The soundtrack is fucking terrible

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a good racing game, but there are some issues which hold it back from being great. I also feel like I'm not going to remember this game by the end of the year. With a better soundtrack, more useful cop abilities, and tweaked rubberbanding, this could have been a great game. As it sits:
7.5/10

Yakuza 5 (2015) - PS3
This game was thought to be one of those Mother 3 situations, but Sega finally got off their asses and localised it. Unfortunately, it was only ever released as a digital download. R.I.P. my remaining harddrive space (the PS3 is fucking dumb; you have to have twice as much space as the game needs to download it; after downloading it, the system copies it and tries to install it; this way you don't have to redownload it if there's an error installing it) (i said it was dumb but then there was an error installing it on my system)
Following in Yakuza 4's footsteps, Yakuza 5 features a grand total of FIVE protagonists. Returning from 4 are Kiryu, Akiyama, and Saejima; new to the series is Shinada, and playable for the first time is Haruka for whatever reason. UNLIKE Yakuza 4, however, Yakuza 5 takes place across FIVE cities: the returning Kamurocho (Tokyo) and Sotenbori (Osaka), plus the all-new Tsukimino (Sapporo), Kineicho (Nagoya), and Nagasugai (Fukuoka).

I was planning to take a decent-sized break between Yakuza 4 and 5 (and play Dead Souls in-between), but goddammit I've got a problem

GENERAL:
+ They show where substories are on the in-game map now
+ The true debut of Baka Mitai, one of the best karaoke songs in the series (Akiyama's version is absolutely flawless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lhJ0LZtv3w )
+ Taiko Drum Master is the best arcade game in the series
+ The photo booth minigame is pretty neato (much better than Kiwami's version)
+ Air hockey is G R E A T and I am so glad they replaced the shitty ping pong minigame from 4 with it
+ Air hockey also has a dedicated "look at boobs" button (that is a button that should be in every game)
- The revelations in this game were pretty weak compared to 3 and 4 (except Shinada's, which was great)
- Trying to get all of the specific random battles you need to do to complete the victory road in each city is absolutely R E T A R D E D

KIRYU'S STORY:
+ You can literally go straight to karaoke as soon as you get control of Kiryu
+ MACHINE GUN KISSU DE JUST FALL IN LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE
+ Kiryu's coworkers at the taxi depot are pretty great
+ Taxi driving is super-fun
+ ONE OF THE STREET RACING SONGS IS FUCKING DAYTONAAAAAAAAAAAAA ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igpOzhAkKhw )
+ That huge fight at the docks was SWEET
+ Look backward at it after going to all three new cities, Nagasugai was the best one
- They removed my favourite move (Essence of Rolling)
- Jesus Daigo looks like he's aged twenty years
- They fucking RUINED Kamurocho Lullaby
- They blow their load too early with the most shocking, unbelievable plot twist in the series: Kiryu hasn't been to a hostess club in AT LEAST six months (man's addicted)
- The plot is kind of boring but at least it isn't insulting like Yakuza 4 (it still has time to get there don't worry)
- I'm not going to remember most of these substories in a week (wrestling, Yuya, and maybe the movie are exceptions)

Yakuza 5's biggest problem is apparent right at the end of Kiryu's story. They make all of these twists and turns and you're like "OH SHIT" then you're like "OH FUCK" then you hear about Mt. Inobue and you're like "OH SHIT". Then Kiryu listens to the news on the car radio and you're like "OH FUCK". Then it's time to play as Saejima in a flashback sequence that is completely and totally unrelated to any of this.
Yakuza 0 had a similar problem early on, with Majima's story starting out MUCH stronger than KIryu's, but the time between when you got to pick Majima's story back up was two chapters, rather than TWELVE in this game.

Part 1 rating: 9/10

SAEJIMA'S STORY:
+ Being able to roam Kamurocho first thing is a godsend
+ You can literally go straight to karaoke as soon as you get control of Saejima
+ Saejima's Rouge of Love oh god
+ I love how in the first dream sequence, Saejima doesn't know where to take Kaguya on a date and your ghost buddy's just like "ARE YOU STUPID?! K A R A O K E"
+ The huge fight in the exercise yard is pretty sweet
+ THERE'S A BOSS FIGHT AGAINST A FUCKING BEAR
+ That heat move on a man bouncing off the ground is DELIGHTFUL
+ The Hatsune Miku snow sculpture made me chuckle
+ The Santa substory is great
+ I love that they translated Kaguya's regional dialect word into "hella" and you can call her out on it and she's like "no way everyone says hella"
+ Saejima's trainer is pretty cool
+ The main hunting missions are neat, and just hunting itself is pretty fun
+ I like the whole story behind the main hunting missions as well
- All of the "do this specific thing for me" side hunting missions just aren't worth it though
- If you don't convert your money to platinum plates and put all your items in the telephone box, you will lose them FOREVER after Saejima leaves Kamurocho
- R.I.P. Saejima's hair
- Why does there need to be two dream sequences
- The dream sequence music is ANNOYING
- The impassable snowbanks between the sidewalks and road in Saejima's city are just annoying
- The snowball fights suck
- The ramen delivery substory is the worst shit ever (it's an incredibly shitty version of Yakuza 3's best substory; the ice cream one)
- At the end, they spend too long talking about talking about the damn thing ("i am going to tell you this thing" "ok" "now this thing i'm going to tell you is important" "ok")
- Daigo says in part 1 "you don't hold a yakuza meeting in a building with a lot of windows because snipers any idiot knows that" and what does Kitakata do?
- "oh yeah this deathtrap building is far safer than the unguarded sewers"

The prison shit dragged on for a bit too long, Saejima's city was the worst yet in the series, and the whole part where Kitakata got shot was so obvious and dumb that I just can't take it seriously. The game can still recover from this, but Saejima's story is much weaker than Kiryu's was.
I'm also starting to think that five cities was too many. While Kamurocho and Sotenbori are repeats, this still means that they had to design three new cities from scratch. Nagasugai was great, but Tsukimino was very annoying to navigate, and didn't really make me want to come back.

Thinking about it, I don't know what the deal is. I like Saejima as a character, and he has my second-favourite fighting style behind Kiryu, but his story chapters are just the worst. Avoiding the cops in Yakuza 4 was godawful, having two separate prison sections in two games was bad, and the city of Tsukimino was bad, as well. The guy just can't catch a break.
Speaking of breaks, I took a large one right before Saejima's section, and again right in the middle. Once I got out of Saejima's section, I plowed straight through. It's not a very good section at all.

Part 2 rating: 6.5/10
Overall rating so far: 8/10

HARUKA'S STORY:
Hatred:
- The very first scene you see is some fucking bitch talking at Kiryu and saying the DUMBEST shit
- "the children say they're very happy THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE"
- "the children all love you LEAVE FOREVER AND NEVER COME BACK"
- "children shouldn't be allowed to think of others THEY SHOULD BE SELFISH"
- "CHILDREN SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO MAKE CHOICES BETWEEN TWO THINGS THEY WANT THAT ARE INCOMPATIBLE!!! I WILL DECIDE FOR THEM!!!"
- "HER DREAM IS TO BECOME A SINGER!!!" "what how do you know this" "BECAUSE IT WAS MY DREAM!!! SHE INHERITED IT EVEN THOUGH WE'VE NEVER MET BEFORE!!!"
- Seriously, watch the fucking cutscene. That is exactly what she says. 16:43 of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP_C_y0fUAY
- I am L I V I D right now
- Remember when I said that Yasuko (from Yakuza 4) was the worst character in the history of fiction?
- Well, M O V E   O V E R because there's a new queen!
- In one cutscene, I hate this woman more than a whole game's worth of Yasuko's absolute B U L L S H I T
- Listen, I fucking hated Yasuko and thought it was 100% impossible for a fictional character to be worse than her; letalone one in the same series
- BUT G O D D A M N THEY PROVED ME WRONG
- I honestly HONESTLY H O N E S T L Y don't think I've EVER been this mad before IN MY ENTIRE LIFE
- EVERYONE ELSE WAS RIGHT
- KIRYU'S STORY SHOULD HAVE ENDED AFTER YAKUZA 3
- HE DOESN'T DESERVE THIS
- I DON'T DESERVE THIS
- "if you lose the competition that i did not allow you adequate time to train for, i will ruin your life and the lives of every single person you ever cared about"


Everything else:
+ The first round of Princess League was HYPE
+ FUCK P-Set
+ Haruka's revelation was great
+ The comedy duo minigame is fun, even if there's a lot of brute-forcing if you don't understand Japanese
+ Idol jobs and dancing and everything are cool
+ Dance battles are neato
+ The scene where Haruka, Akari, and Yui go out to eat was HEARTWARMING; MY HEART IS CURRENTLY WARM
+ Playing the minigames like air hockey and pool against other idols was neat
+ The quiz show was cool; especially the general trivia one (my knowledge of the comparative length of intestines finally comes in handy)
- The running minigame is weird and stupid
- "Pick which one of these three sentences has a grammatical error!" Then you look at the options and two of them have mistakes
- Haruka has absolutely ridiculous amounts of Stockholm Syndrome
- Why the fuck did Haruka bend the fucking knee to those P-Set clowns?! That's not what Uncle Kaz taught her; she should have laid those cunts the fuck out
- I wish less of the events were dancing to So Much More and that more were to Loneliness Loop; it's a much better song, but So Much More gets like 90% of the dances


THAT ENDING:
+ PARK FUCKING KILLED HERSELF
+ YES YES YES YES
+ BEST GAME
+ GAME OF THE YEAR
+ ALL YEARS
+ WOOP WOOP
+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZE1Fh1AgWQ
+ YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+ I have no fucking clue how they're going to follow up this shit but FUCK DUDE
+ I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW

I am not being ironic or joking right now when I say that I loved Haruka's idol shit. It's absolutely great. The only problem is Park, who needs to be killed in a manner similar to Tachibana. By which I mean strapping her to a chair and smashing her toes one by one with a sledgehammer. Even that might be too generous.
Yakuza 7 needs to have another idol protagonist

Part 3-1 rating: 10/10
Overall rating so far: 9/10

AKIYAMA'S STORY:
+ You can literally go straight to karaoke as soon as you get control of Akiyama
+ The best version of Baka Mitai
+ Saigo is still absolutely amazing; the best trainer character ever
+ Hana's voice actress is still outstanding
+ THE PART WHERE HARUKA THROWS AKIYAMA A FIRE EXTINGUISHER AND HE LEAPS IN THE AIR AND SMASHES A GUY WITH IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME
+ The fight in the junkyard was neato
- The fight against ponytail man is annoying
- The heat move where you knee a guy in the face over and over sucks and activates all the fucking time
- Did Majima really need a second tragic backstory tacked on?

Akiyama's section is about average as far as Yakuza game sections go, which is still really good. Akiyama's section did nothing to raise or lower the rating.

Part 3-2 rating: 8/10
Overall rating so far: 9/10

SHINADA'S STORY:
+ MACHINE GUN KISSU DE JUST FALL IN LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE
+ As the game's weapons specialist, it's so nice that Shinada gets access to unbreakable weapons
+ Shinada's story is by far and without a doubt the most interesting one
+ The part where you fight through the warehouse and the lumber yard was just perfect
+ The opening boss fight in chapter 4 was also perfect
+ The fight in the baseball stadium was sweet
+ This is the first time in the series that the batting cage minigame has been any good; which is important since it's a big part of Shinada's side story
+ The mission where you have to hit a home run for a boy about to undergo an operation is just fucking 10/10; I haven't laughed that hard in ages
+ Shinada's substories do a really good job of showing a different side of his character than the main story shows
+ They brought back the weapon trainer guy from Yakuza 3
+ The fact that the nightlife navigator man actually knows Shinada is a really nice touch
- Shinada's hostess is the worst one in the game
- THE DRAWING TICKET THING TAKES FOREVER AND THEY ONLY GIVE ME PACKS OF TISSUES

Shinada's four chapters may be the best and most interesting story the series has ever told. These four chapters have likable, interesting characters, and a plot that wraps itself around them perfectly. I would very much like Shinada to come back in a future game, along with Takasugi. Those two make a really good pair.
Of all four protagonists' fighting styles, however, Shinada's is probably the worst. The problem is about the same as Tanimura from Yakuza 4: he's only good when he can end his combos on a heat attack. His weapon moves are cool, but his infinite durability weapons (aka his gimmick) are just too weak.

Part 4 rating: 10/10
Overall rating so far: 9.5/10

FINALE:
+ You can literally go straight to karaoke as soon as you get control of any character (again)
+ You can call girls from other cities to come all the way to Kamurocho just to do the same date activities you could do in the other cities
+ "you called me all the way to Tokyo just to use a photo booth?!" "don't be like that; there are exclusive frames here" (ACTUAL DIALOGUE)
+ Every character can face Komaki and Sosuke to increase their level cap by five; Haruka's is an actual dance battle against Komaki (BEST GAME)
+ In chapter 3, you actually get to choose if you want to do the chapter as Kiryu or Saejima
+ Saejima's final boss fight is sweet
+ Shinada's final boss fight is neato
+ That scene where Shinada gets a phone call from Takasugi WARMED MY HEART
+ The actual final boss may be out of nowhere and a dumb fucking twist, but I'd already checked out of the plot so I liked it
+ Also fighting him was sweet
+ Haruka finally gets to say "FUCK YOU" to Park at the very end by blueballing her YUME in front of MILLIONS
+ I hated Haruka in Yakuza 1, but I absolutely love her now
+ Haruka gets her own secret boss to defeat in both a dance battle and a mock-Princess League showdown
- Naturally, the song is So Much More once again
- "the enemy wants us all to kill eachother shirtless on this rooftop for their plans we're trying to stop so let's all kill eachother shirtless on this rooftop" "sounds good"
- "man you guys are all idiots but there is ONE THING you are forgetting: i am an idiot as well"
- FUCK P-Set
- Akiyama's final boss is lame; Kanai is never threatening or memorable, plus the actual fight is just bad
- The final hostess requires 5,000,000 yen at the end of her story, and the game can just decide that you're unlucky as fuck gambling on any given day

The shirtless rooftop tournament is when any hope this game had of being taken seriously flew out the window. It's now in the same "really dumb but entertaining" category as Yakuza 3, and that's not a bad thing. The final boss came out of nowhere, but it was a fun fight, and I liked the scene with him in Daigo's chair a lot, so I don't mind.

Finale rating: 9/10

THE SECRET BOSSES:
+ Akiyama's fight feels like a legitimate struggle, and instills a sense of accomplishment at the end
+ Saejima's fight is easy as fuck, but it's a fun time, and has a callback to his trainer
+ Shinada's fight is a legitimate challenge for the first two stages, even if the third stage is a joke that can be won by spamming knife attacks
- Kiryu's fight is terrible
- He's invincible for 99% of the time unless you spam Tiger Drop
- He constantly grabs you, which accomplishes nothing but making you press X over and over and over and over and over
- It's simply a terrible fight; I just gave up and let him kill me because I wasn't having fun
- You are literally unable to defeat this boss using the fighting skills you learned throughout the game
- The ENTIRE POINT of a secret boss is to make sure you've learned how to play the game and use all your moves to their fullest
- This boss only makes sure you've learned how to spam Tiger Drop

Yakuza 5, in the end, has a lot of fat. Kiryu's story has a lot of GREAT moments, but a lot of the exposition and cutscenes are simply too long-winded. Saejima's story is kind of uninteresting and lasts for too long. Haruka's story pissed me off immediately with Park's bullshit, but ended up being very enjoyable in the end. Akiyama's story felt like it went nowhere for a bit too long, and it got a bit preachy with all the talk of dreams. Shinada's story was an absolute 10/10, especially once it got going. The finale went for the standard Yakuza dumb plot twist, and I didn't hate it. It was a fun time.
However, there's so much here that not all of it has to be good to leave a good impression. There were so many things I had a lot of fun with throughout the game that I can ignore the low spot that is Saejima's portion. If you'll notice, this review is, like, three times as long as any other one I've done. That's just because there's SO MUCH CONTENT (and the cutscenes in this series go on for years as it is)

OVERALL RATING: 9.5/10

Shinada's story >>>>> Kiryu's story >>> Haruka's story >>> Akiyama's story >>>>> Saejima's story
Saejima's substories > Haruka's substories > Shinada's substories > Akiyama's substories > Kiryu's substories
Haruka's idolatry > Shinada's baseball > Kiryu's taxi driving >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Saejima's hunting
Yakuza 0 > Yakuza 3 > Yakuza 5 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yakuza 4 >>> Yakuza 2 > Yakuza Kiwami

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate (2012) - Xbone
I say 2012, but this is a 2014 "Ultimate" version, up-ported from 360. In between, there was a Wii U version called "Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper".
Now, I played DW8 and SW4 on PS4, so why did I get this one on Xbone? Well, it was ten dollars cheaper.

Warriors Orochi is a crossover title, featuring an original storyline where the characters from Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors meet up so they can fight demons. There are also extra characters from other series, like Ryu, Ayane, Rachel, and Momiji from Ninja Gaiden/Dead or Alive, and Sophitia from Soul Calibur, and non-Asian historical figures like Achilles and Joan of Arc. Achilles, of course, was from their game based on Troy. The game came out after DW7E and SW3, so features and characters from DW8 and SW4 will be absent but oh well.

This version of the game has eight chapters; four more than the original WO3 or Hyper. This makes the game really fucking long, so I took a break after the original ending to play something else. (it was a different Warriors game sorry)
(chapters 5-8 aren't as long as 1-4 but oh well what's done is done)

+ It's a long-ass game
+ Being able to control three characters allows you to have a lot more versatility in your crew (lets more situational characters shine)
+ Sima Zhao, Hanbei, and Ma Chao is a very good starting trio
+ Every character gets unique interactions in the base with characters from both series
+ That mission where you unlock Gracia though
+ Finally being able to go to the Mystic Realm in chapter 7 is pretty sweet
+ The RB attacks are great additions to movesets; powerful moves that take a chunk of your musou meter
+ They managed to make absolutely shitty movesets (cough Lianshi's crossbow) great in this game
+ Experience needed to reach the next level caps at 5,000, rather than growing exponentially
- There is still absolutely no way to level up your characters so you're using the "recommended" set every mission, since everyone starts at level one
- No English dub if you're into that sort of thing
- Fighting Masamune Date is the most INFURIATING THING
- I still have no clue what pressing B does with the Samurai Warriors characters
- Having to raise character relationships to unlock side missions is pointless and just makes you pay for a bunch of tea parties, then replay the first mission again
- Guan Ping's stage requires the most unintuitive route ever with way too much dead travel time
- No visual difference between completed missions and failed missions on the menu
- Mid-mission cutscenes are very abrupt interruptions
- SW3 and DW7 certainly weren't the high point for character designs

A long-ass game with a lot of content. There's sure to be at least a few characters you enjoy in this game, out of well over a hundred. The story's nice, and seeing characters from Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors interact with eachother is neat. None of my complaints are significant in the slightest.
9/10
top five characters:
1. Sun Jian
2. Kai
3. Zhong Hui
4. Hideyoshi Toyotomi
5. Hanbei Takenaka

Kirby: Planet Robobot (2016) - 3DS
Acquired Black Friday 2017 for $25 from Target
Prior to this game, the only Kirby game I'd played was, of course, Superstar. Superstar is pretty great, so I've been meaning to grab Robobot for a while. Planet Robobot's big new thing is the robot. In a lot of levels, you'll come across an obstacle as Kirby that he can't really do anything about, and has to avoid, such as giant logs, cars, that sort of thing. Later in the level, you'll get in the giant robot, and be able to destroy those obstacles. A lot of robot puzzles involve moving or destroying things Kirby can't on his own.
This game also has support for all of the Smash Bros. amiibos. This leads to new and exciting powers for Kirby based on Smash Bros. characters, which you can get even without the amiibo through regular Kirby means. Eating shit. For example, Ness's amiibo gets you psychic powers and shit, Dr. Mario's amiibo will let you throw pills, and a Fire Emblem amiibo will get you a sword

+ New powers like PSI and poison are neato
+ The robot is pretty fucking sweet, and allows you to get revenge on any cars or dice that have run you over
+ Seriously, I will be disappointed if they just abandon the robot forever and never bring it back
+ The stickers you find in the level can be used to customise your robot
+ Getting the GameBoy remote that allows you to control a Robo-Kirby on a different 2D plane is a fun puzzle
+ Meta Knightmare Returns is a great mode for replay value
- The water levels kind of suck
- The code cubes you get by turning a screw for longer than it takes to complete the decoy puzzle that screw is used for are absolute bullshit

Everyone hails Superstar as the best Kirby game, but I liked this one a little more.
8/10

I've been meaning to get to Robobot soon. glad to hear you gave it a rave review, even though the best kirby game in my heart will always be Nightmare in Dreamland

(granted I haven't played superstar yet)

Pokémon Quest (2018) - Switch
It was free, so what do I have to lose but time? I hate that shit anyway
This is one of those "free to play*" games, where they want you to pay money so they make everything grindy and inconvenient.
This review will be a bit different than my normal reviews, for a variety of reasons. Normally, I finish a game first, but F2P/P2W games are different. I will be outlining how the game works, and then you decide whether its worth a download on your Switch or Android/iOS device when that version comes out.

The premise of this game is that you get blocky generation 1 Pokémon and fight other blocky generation 1 Pokémon in order to make your village of generation 1 Pokémon the BEST village of generation 1 Pokémon. Now, some people may complain that it is generation 1 Pokémon only, but those people are L O S E R S
(actually you're a foreigner exploring the island but my goals and the game's goals are different)

The core gameplay features your team of three Pokémon wandering around and attacking enemies on their own, and you spam their special attacks when they're available. Even though it's mostly automated, I found it strangely enjoyable when I wasn't getting gangraped by fire-types in a level where they told me to bring flying-types for whatever reason (my best flying-type was Butterfree).

TUTORIAL:
+ You get to choose your starting guy from Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Pikachu, and Eevee
- The tutorial is the most railroady piece of shit in history
- You can't even access the OPTIONS MENU until it's over
- THE OPTIONS MENU
- THE GAME IS LOUD AS FUCK LET ME TURN THE VOLUME DOWN
- The are no volume options other than "off"; the game is just naturally loud as FUCK
- I always keep my volume at 30, and every other game, I can adjust so it sounds right at 30 BUT NOT THIS GAME

ACTUAL GAME:
+ The system of using badges to power up your Pokémon really helps since experience comes along at a snail's pace
+ Item evolutions are replaced by level evolutions
- Item evolutions are replaced by level evolutions, and experience comes along at a snail's pace
- You can very easily accidentally evolve your Eevee into something stupid (Flareon) because it's evolution is determined by which party slot it's in
- The main problem is that normal, fire, and water guys are easy to get, but fuck if I know how to get grass or electric
- The system used to acquire new Pokémon is vague and really just silly
- The items you use are based on colour; I wanted an electric-type so I popped in yellow foods and got an Abra (I mean Abra's cool but he doesn't help against Slowpokes)
- I have no idea how to get a grass guy; there are five slots that all HAVE to be filled and you can't just put in yellow and blue to make green and there's no green and FUCK
- Wild Pokémon take FOREVER to show up in your camp, which is especially bad because you don't know what you're going to get at all
- Wild Pokémon can show up at STUPIDLY low levels
- Movesets are determined by RNG
- Flamethrower fucking sucks compared to ember for some reason???
- I still TO THIS DAY do not understand why Pidgey can't learn peck
- This game is grindy as shit; stage power levels go up so much faster than your team's power level
- The "kill Pokémon to power up other Pokémon" mechanic is useless because they give barely any experience and you get new Pokémon so infrequently
- The "recommended type" shit is useless because it goes by area, not level within that area (so they recommend water for Golbat's stage and flying for Ninetales's stage)

BASICALLY:
it's a time-waster that i'll play until i get tired of it in a day or two

REVISITED: Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) - Xbox 360
listen to this while reading this review dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ooKPtvKImw
because you're not going to be able to listen to it in-game any more
Grand Theft Auto IV is still a controversial game to this day, and I don't mean "mass hysteria"-type controversy. Simply put, people still debate just how good of a game GTA IV actually was. Forgetting about the PSP games for a moment, GTA IV was the then-next generation follow-up to San Andreas, which was a massive game full of visual and gameplay variety. San Andreas had three cities that all felt different from eachother (and then again different from III's Liberty City and Vice City's, well, Vice City), and it had so much shit to do. Not all of SA's minigames and side missions were even good, but the sheer amount of them meant that the bad ones didn't really stick around in your mind. San Andreas was a massive, impressive achievement for a videogame, especially in 2004 on the PS2. It was full of memorable characters and moments, and hopes and expectations were as high as they could possibly go for the next main console title.
Grand Theft Auto IV was not San Andreas, by any stretch of the imagination. The four-island map of Liberty City is by and large grey and grimy, in stark contrast to the yellowed Los Santos, colourful San Fierro, and neon-lit Las Venturas. Gone are the jetpack, VTOL aircraft, and all the other fun toys that were wholly unrealistic for a gangster to have. Gone is the ability to make your character a fatty with a dumb neon pink haircut running around in just his underwear, hitting people with a purple dildo. Gone are the cars you can actually drive, and in their place are these squirrelly pieces of shit that will spin out if you so much as look at them.
I don't blame anyone for not liking GTA IV, honestly. It's not at all what I wanted when I saw the name in PSM (an actual magazine, that's how long ago this was).

GTA IV came out in 2008, and is a window into exactly ten years ago. There's an in-game internet with a parody of MySpace. That alone tells that entire story.
Before this playthrough, I have beaten GTA IV twice (once with each ending, even). Once when it came out, and once somewhere around 2012 I think? I don't think GTA V was out yet. I've beaten each expansion only once.

I am going to divide this review in multiple categories, since there will be a lot to talk about. I am playing this game on an Xbone, so if anything sounds really weird, it may be due to that. I've noticed that the game runs faster on Xbone than on 360, but it's an upgrade from locked 30 FPS to variable 32-48 FPS or something like that.

SOUNDTRACK:
+ 1979, Dominion, Evil Woman, Fascination, Heaven and Hell, Jailbreak, Mama, New York Groove
+ One Vision, Remedy, Rocky Mountain Way, Street Kids, Straight On, The Seeker, Thug, Turn You Inside-Out
+ China Grove, Drivin' Wheel, Every Picture Tells a Story, Funk #49, Free Ride, Highway Star, Jane, Renegade, Saturday Night Special, Wild Side
- Edge of Seventeen, Her Strut, I Wanna be Your Dog
- Go to Hell, Lord of the Thighs
- REALLY; you get the run of Aerosmith's discography, and THAT'S the song you choose? The ONLY bad one on the otherwise perfect album?
- SHOULD HAVE BEEN TOO BAD OR WOMAN OF THE WORLD OR TRAIN KEPT A-ROLLIN' OR FUCKING WHATEVER
- 10-year music licensing means that they had to remove 1979, Evil Woman, Fascination, Heaven and Hell, Five to One, Jane, and Touch Too Much
- Wait, let me get this straight:
- They REMOVED music from my game
- And are forcing me to REDOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE GAME
- Just to REMOVE content that I PAID FOR
- The Xbone was a mistake
- Digital content updates were a mistake
- Jews were a mistake


GAMEPLAY/INTERFACE:
+ The ZiT service that lets you find out what song is playing is a godsend (GTA V did it better, but that game came out five years later so I'm not gonna hold that against it)
- ZiT doesn't seem to recognise the TLATD/TBOGT songs though
- In order to have the camera move correctly, you also have to invert your aiming (Jesus Christ do I have to make a decision between being able to drive and able to aim?)
- I still have no idea who the fuck thought these driving physics were anything but awful
- Like, when a game is around 75% driving and the driving feels godawful, you've got a problem
- The HUD could stand to be bigger
- The way you buy and change clothes takes much longer and is more awkward than in San Andreas for no good reason
- Once you get to the third island, there's nothing left to use money on, except to keep your ammo topped off
- But hey, you can use those millions to rebuy outfits when you want to change, so you can avoid the terrible closet interface


MAIN MISSIONS/CHARACTERS:
+ Roman is written VERY well as a character who pisses you off at times, but you still want to help him when shit goes down
+ Brucie is a 10/10 bro, and legitimately the best character in the game
+ Little Jacob is also a 10/10 bro
+ The idea of Little Jacob being the one translating Badman's speech for Niko is pretty funny, since Niko can barely understand Little Jacob
+ Dimitri is written pretty well; it's not obvious what's going to happen, but it makes sense when it does
+ The Playbox/Dwayne decision is probably the best execution of a "moral choice" in any game ever (not hard)
+ Yes, there is an outcome that is clearly better, but you don't know that on your first playthrough, and it invites discussion between Playbots and Forgemen
+ All these years, I thought the only way to finish the lawyer mission was to fight through the lobby, but you can just jump out the window to the street and call it a day
+ Lure gives you many options to get the guy to the window; you can call his home phone, shoot his satellite dish, arming his car with a bomb and spooking him, etc.
+ I like the mafia missions toward the end of the game a lot
+ Michelle having a profile on lovemeet.com was great; I didn't realise it was her ten years ago
- Why is Michelle so bad at her job; her questions are all really suspicious (I didn't notice when I was 14 because I was 14 and like "gimme dat virtual puss")
- The start of the game is mediocre; it doesn't get good until you meet Playbox and get to Algonquin
- The game takes away your only safehouse on the starting island and doesn't give you a replacement (and being able to save anywhere was introduced in GTA V)
- What's more, most of the friend characters live on that island, so doing a hang-out run is inconvenient
- Florian
- Pegorino's Pride: if you snipe the guy who comes out from behind aiming a gun at Pegorino before he fires, you fail the mission???
- Trespass: if you choose to go into the sewer tunnel it's simply too dark to see anything at all
- Wrong is Right is terrible
- Florian's missions are all really terrible chases
- Pegorino is a fucking idiot
- Kate gets glitched out if you take the Deal ending
- Kate in general seems too hostile to be the main love interest


SIDE MISSIONS/MINIGAMES:
+ Stealing cars for Brucie and dealing drugs for Little Jacob are nice, fun ways to make money early on
+ The most wanted list you can access in the police car is a much cooler and more interesting way to handle vigilante than before
+ I like the Split Sides club's comedy routines
+ Stranger missions are a neat way to add character to the city
+ Having stranger missions for characters you can spare or kill during the story is a really nice touch
+ Brian's stranger mission chain tells a pretty nice story in a short amount of time (he has a believable character arc in three short missions)
+ Pathos's stranger mission was neato
+ The fact that Dwayne calls you after you help out his ex-girlfriend was very nice
+ The assassination missions are neato but I wish there were a few more
- The assassination missions pay like shit; I actually lost money doing them all because I used rockets, which cost more than the mission would pay
- I wish there were more cars to steal for Brucie, or that Stevie's car thefts were done via email as well
- There are three optional girlfriends you can meet online, and two of them are terrible (the two LoveMeet girls; why couldn't we date the Russian girl instead?)

Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that needs some time to cook. A replay can easily falter at the beginning, due to a slow pace and a lot of boring, unlikable characters (Vlad, Mikhail, Elizabeta). Once Niko gets to Algonquin, though, the game begins its upswing. The drama between Playbox and Dwayne, running with the McRearys, and being able to hang with top-shelf bro Brucie are memorable and fun moments. Being able to approach missions in as many ways as you want is what makes this game as great as it is. GTA V scripted its missions far too heavily, leaving you with very few avenues of approach.
I loved how complex the mission flowchart becomes in the middle of the game. Most GTA games would have forced missions on you much earlier, but GTA IV lets them hang around for a long-ass time.
http://gta.wikia.com/wiki/File:MissionPath-GTAIV-20140302.png
The main detraction people list is how needy the friends are, always inviting you out to activities you've done a million times. There's a trick to that, though. If you accept the invitation, then call back to cancel it, you don't have to do the activity and you don't lose friendship points. It's really nice.

GTA IV could have been a 10/10 if the Broker/Dukes missions were better, the friendship system wasn't so in-your-face, and the brightness was turned up a bit so you can actually see what the fuck you're doing. As it sits, GTA IV is still a must-play for open-world crime fans, but they might just give up on it early because it takes so long to get good. It's a shame, because when GTA IV hits its stride, the missions' allowance for varied playstyles simply can't be touched.

9/10

Main game ratings (3D only):
San Andreas > Vice City > IV > V > Liberty City Stories > III > Vice City Stories
Protagonists:
CJ > Tommy > Claude > Michael > Toni > Trevor > Niko > Franklin > Vic

REVISITED: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned (2009) - Xbox 360
listen to this while reading this review dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApQhoNW6PXk
(I know that there is no second "the" in the title, but it sounds better with it)
The Lost and the Damned is the first of two major expansions for GTA IV. If you're going to play GTA IV, the experience is not complete without the expansions. Together, they tell a full story. Apart, you're left wondering why the game seemingly forgot about certain antagonists. GTA IV makes a big deal about how Niko has history with Bulgarin, but he's seemingly forgotten about by the end of the game, because he gets killed in TBOGT. TLATD makes Ray into a major antagonist, but we already know Niko killed him in GTA IV.
TLATD is about a biker gang, which sold me immediately back when I was 15. It was a simpler time, back before I was skeptical about everything. This expansion's story begins around the same time as GTA IV, and ends right before Niko kidnapped Gracie. This expansion is a quarter the length of GTA IV. GTA IV had 88 story missions, and TLATD has 22.
It speaks to the strengths of GTA IV that I finished it and immediately wanted to jump into the expansion.

+ They FIXED the godawful bike handling from the original GTA IV
+ The sawn-off shotgun is a perfect drive-by weapon against motorcycles
+ The 9mm automatic pistol gives you a decent handgun before you can get the desert eagle
+ The assault shotgun is fucking ridiculous
+ Being able to call Jim to give you a max ammo pickup at the safehouse is great, especially since there are larger shootouts early on
+ Being able to get Clay to deliver you a motorcycle immediately is great
+ Friend activities are completely optional and no one ever calls you to do them
+ New comedy routines at the Split Sides club
+ Missions have actual checkpoints this time, unlike vanilla GTA IV
+ The final mission is absolutely great
+ That ending is perfect
- Only two safehouses, and they're both on the same island
- A lot of Johnny's battle lines are really bad
- The mission title font can be hard to read at times; I wish they'd either made it bigger or chosen a more legible font (vanilla GTA IV's font was perfectly legible)
- penis
- Elizabeta simply isn't an interesting character; she's a shitty Ricardo Diaz
- They went in way too hard in making the government agent a "bad guy" so you'd sympathise with the illegal alien drug mule (didn't work)
- The fact that Niko already killed Ray in vanilla GTA IV makes the ending few missions not work at all
- Like, Ray kills and tortures Jim, sends hit squads after Johnny, but government man's just like "don't worry about it"
- Your Lost buddies you get in gang wars are fucking stupid; the car is on fire, and you are parked right next to it

The Lost and the Damned is everything it needed to be. It fixes problems GTA IV had, and has a fun and varied set of missions. There wasn't any point where I felt like the missions dragged, and the Bohan section was mercifully short. The final mission of this expansion is a great shootout where the game just says "take whatever weapons you want for free; it's time to kick the final mission's shit in". The expansion's pacing could have been better, but it's not a total mess in that department like GTA V was.

9/10

The ending of this expansion was perfect. I'm no "GAMES ARE ART" guy, but I know a good ending when I see one. That last shot worked on so many levels. Unfortunately, GTA V happened. Trevor's section of GTA V begins by completely undermining the ending of this expansion by featuring Johnny, Terry, and Clay still running with the Lost, and Johnny still in love with Ashley. They completely erased everything that made this expansion's ending work. But that's a problem with GTA V, not with TLATD.

tangent:

Adding TLATD into the ratings that I gave last time:
Game ratings (3D only):
San Andreas > Vice City > The Lost and the Damned > IV > V > Liberty City Stories > III > Vice City Stories
Protagonists:
CJ > Tommy > Claude > Michael > Toni > Trevor > Johnny > Niko > Franklin > Vic

REVISITED: Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (2015) - Xbone
the time has come and so have i
I played DMC4 when it was new back in 2008, and through again back in 2013. Now that DMC5 has been announced (hallelujah), it's a great time to finally play the remastered/updated version I bought last year when it was on sale.
DMC4 stars Nero, who is a cocky punk, madly in love with this game's damsel in distress. He has a (smokin') sick demon arm, a motorcycle sword, and a giant revolver. For the second half of the game (minus the last two chapters), you play as series favourite Dante.

I have never once played a DMC game with the default control scheme. check it out:

Spoiler:

+ Being able to get a refund if you buy moves you end up not liking/using is absolutely GREAT
+ Nero having the "pull guy to you" move really helps keep combos going
+ Being able to instantly rev your sword up after an attack is neato
+ Being able to just hold a charge shot indefinitely, even when attacking with your sword or demon arm, really makes Nero's combat feel more distinct
+ The best boss fights in DMC have always been the ones against enemies around the same size as you; the Credo fight keeps that tradition going
+ And that second boss fight against Dante is absolutely perfect even if he's an input-reading piece of shit
+ The way Nero uses his final moments (as far as he knows) to flip off Dante was perfect
+ Nero and Dante have different ideas behind their combat styles, which contrast eachother perfectly
+ Nero is based around utilising a limited toolset to its maximum potential (only having one gun, one sword, one demon arm, and one devil trigger mode)
+ Dante, meanwhile, is based around getting a shitload of new toys and swapping between them on the fly like a madman
+ Uncle Dante best Dante
+ All three of Dante's new weapons are great (Pandora and Lucifer have a learning curve though)
+ The way Dante always plays with his new weapons as soon as he gets them is just 10/10
+ Chapter 19 (aka the boss rush) is absolutely this game at its best and the perfect way to get players back into the groove of using Nero
+ Bloody Palace is a 10/10 bonus mode, allowing you to play as any of the five playable characters
+ Lady and Vergil are great additions with fun new playstyles
- Trish kind of sucks
- The gyro blades can be annoying at times (and "that which makes an impact" means fucking nothing; I only knew what it meant because I'd played the game before)
- The Agnus fight where you throw sword demons at him kind of sucks
- Those flying reaper demons really fucking suck, especially as Dante, and ESPECIALLY when they clip through the walls
- Every single thing about chapter 11 is terrible (ESPECIALLY the boss fight)
- I wish you could disable some of Dante's weapons so you don't have to scroll through them every time
- Chapter 14 is fucking awful
- Those electrical demons you face as Dante in the castle are fucking stupid
- The final boss is legitimately one of the worst in videogame history
- On the Bloody Palace menu screen, when "MISSION MENU" is not highlighted, it is spelled wrong

Dante needed to get his own unique levels so they wouldn't have had to just reuse Nero's and give them horrendous gimmicks. Also, every boss fight against the Pope NEEDED to be overhauled.
Here's a list of simple (except one) fixes that should have been made:
1. Pope fights need to not be the fucking worst shit ever
2. Remove that stupid plant that can eat Dante because that shit isn't fun at all and is just annoying
3. Make Dante's fight against the Saviour stop after you destroy all the gems
4. Remove the electrical demons because they're stupid
BINGO BANGO 9.5/10 GAME RIGHT THERE
As it sits:
8/10

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 (2015) - PS4
uh i can explain

I've never once seen an episode/page of One Piece. I only vaguely know what it's about. (pirates)
(also the main guy can stretch his arms out like lanky kong or some shit i don't know)
This game tells the entire story of One Piece up until what was then the current arc (Dressrosa), then makes some shit up to close up Dressrosa so it can have an ending. Fun times.

The best Straw Hat is obviously Sanji. I mean, you've got stretchy man, three swords man, Hulk reindeer, robot man(?!), skeleton man, hands-out-of-the-ground girl, and a girl who controls lightning(?), but Sanji just kicks people. Fuck yeah, dude
I mean, yeah, Usopp also doesn't do anything extraordinary, but he sucks
(in general: Sanji > Brook > Luffy > Nami > Robin > Zoro > Usopp >>>>> Chopper > Franky)
(gameplay: Brook > Nami > Luffy > Zoro > Sanji > Usopp >>>>> Robin >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Franky > Chopper)
(NPC support attacks: Usopp > Luffy > Nami > Chopper > Zoro > Brook > Franky > Robin > Sanji)

+ Really nice stylised graphics
+ Team-up attacks are neato
+ Movement speed is a big plus
+ Probably tied for best Warriors gameplay with the Samurai Warriors 4 games
+ It's nice that you're able to play as such a varied cast; stretchy man, fire man, sand man, sword man, smoke man, etc.
+ That scene where Luffy pulls Usopp onto the ship though
+ The way Brook runs is just perfect
+ Ace's death hit me right in the feelings
- Fuckin "ACE YOU'RE MY ONLY BROTHER" then goddamn five levels later "OH YEAH IT'S SABO MY OTHER BROTHER"
- FUCK Sabo; he's a pointless asspull character and will NEVER be as cool as Ace
- No English dub if you're into that sort of thing
- Franky's voice is fucking annoying
- The special optional objectives can be really vague; "defeat boss with Usopp" to me meant playing as Usopp, not leading the guy over to AI Usopp)
- Objectives where you have to lead an enemy somewhere simply don't work
- Adventure on Ghost Island may be THE worst level in any game ever (I ragequit on 24 Sep 2017 and didn't pick the game back up until 20 May 2018)
- Okay so after beating it I'll admit that that's an exaggeration, but the penultimate fight is confusing and pointlessly time-consuming
- Timeskip designs range from "oh cool" (Nami, Luffy) to "how did you fuck up this bad" (Franky, Robin)
- No mid-mission save feature LIKE EVERY OTHER WARRIORS GAME HAS (unless you want some owl statue-ass bullshit)

In the end, as someone with no prior One Piece experience and plenty of modern Warriors experience, I had a really good time with this game. I will definitely return to it later to clear out Dream Log and finish up the legend posters for each level.
The only real lowpoint the game had was Adventure on Ghost Island, which can suck my fucking cock

I am now thinking of reading the mango, but more likely, I'll just play other One Piece games instead (the upcoming World Seeker looks pretty good)

9/10

So if you want to play Warriors games I recommend:
Samurai Warriors 4
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3
Hyrule Warriors
Dynasty Warriors 7
Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate
Five great games for people who like repetition

Kid Icarus: Uprising (2012) - 3DS
I've heard a lot of good things about this game, and found it for the very reasonable price of $15, so I decided to go for it.
KIU was made by Masahiro Sakurai, best known for creating Kirby and directing every installment of Super Smash Bros. After modernising Pit's design in Brawl, he decided to make a new Kid Icarus game; the first since Of Myths and Monsters on the original GameBoy, way back in 1991. That game wasn't released in Japan, so the game treats this as the second game rather than the third.
Sakurai's influence is apparent in this game, as the menus look straight out of Brawl, and it even has a collectible trophy system. This game's difficulty system, where you bet currency for a harder level and better rewards, would later be used in both versions of Smash 4.

+ Ground combat is unique and starts to feel like second nature after a few levels
+ Air combat feels really good (I can't comment too much on this though since my rail shooter experience is very limited)
+ Antony Del Rio is a vast improvement over whoever they got to voice Pit in Brawl
+ The game's got a great sense of humour and fun dialogue
+ Even the filler arc in the middle of the game was cool; great level and enemy designs, great dialogue, and my boy Pyrrhon
+ The vehicles are really fun to play around in, especially the cherubot
+ I love the way this game's biggest plot twists are just done cold turkey; no foreshadowing
+ When the game deviates from the normal level formula, it does so in a way that isn't obnoxious, and doesn't linger for too long
+ Mimicuties are the best false chest enemy in any game; instead of being creepy they're just threatening
+ Being able to fuse bad weapons into good ones is really cool
- Not being able to try before you fuse is potentially disasterous
- The game starts to cramp your hand like a motherfucker after a while (this actually gets better after a few play sessions)
- There are some really fucking stupid enemies (tempura wizard, that giant flaming skull that kills you instantly)
- The final boss fight is a bit underwhelming

This is the Toblerone of videogames. Yes, it's great, but FUCK it hurts your hands
Though, I can imagine this game feeling better on a 2DS than my 3DS XL.

In the end, all of my complaints are minor. This is one of the best games on the 3DS, and a must-play for anyone who owns one. I feel bad for people who couldn't get used to the controls, because they missed out on a truly great and unique game. Shame Sakurai isn't interested in doing a sequel.
9/10

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009) - Xbox 360
The original MUA was a new, original story about Dr. Doom commanding a bunch of villains to do shit that I don't remember. You went to Atlantis, MurderWorld, and Asgard at one point. What I do remember is running around as several different Marvel heroes and beating the shit out of bad guys. That is what I want more of in my life.
MUA2 is based on the civil war plotline that was going on around this time (not to be confused with the 2016 film, Captain America: Civil War, which is a bit different). To summarise: the government wants to pass a bill requiring all superheroes (or, rather, superpowered people, even if they want to just live a normal life) to register their names and identities, or they will be considered a threat, and taken out like they try to do with any supervillain. Some heroes are for this, some are against. In this game, you take a side, and play a campaign fighting against the other. However, the two sides join up toward the end, and the only playable characters exclusive to one side to start with are Captain America, Luke Cage, Iron Fist (anti-registration) and Iron Man, Songbird, Mr. Fantastic (pro-registration).
The original game was developed by Raven, but this one was developed by Vicarious Visions. If it's not good, I am blaming it on that.

+ The title screen is cool
+ Roster includes some surprise (but welcome) additions like Penance and Songbird
+ You can remove and redistribute upgrade points as much as you want
+ The entire cast levels up at the same time, so you can play as whoever you want whenever you want
+ Electro's new design makes him look less silly without sacrificing the iconic elements of his classic design (really glad they didn't go with the shitty Ultimate design)
+ Stan Lee cameo
- The controls are weird and you can't change them (in both gameplay and menus)
- Fucking Thor has to be unlocked through collectibles (THOR of all characters)
- Less attacks than in the original
- The original had better and more varied levels
- Each character only gets two costumes in this game, which is half the number the original had
- Costume choice is suspect as fuck (I want to play as the original yellow Daredevil goddammit)
- The trivia game always loops from the fucking beginning so going back to get questions you answered wrong takes fucking forever
- I somehow managed to softlock the game in the trivia minigame

MUA2 wasn't as good as the original, but considering the fact that it was done by another developer and everything else, it's a good sequel. I enjoyed playing this game, especially once the plot kicked into gear.
act 2 > act 3 > act 1
7/10 it's pretty good
My final team was Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, and Green Goblin

LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 (2017) - Xbone
The sequel to 2013's LEGO Marvel Superheroes. We are going to pretend that 2016's LEGO Marvel's Avengers didn't happen in this case. This is the second LEGO game to be developed exclusively for current-generation consoles (and PC), which does show through more than I'd expected it would. (the first was The LEGO Ninjago Movie game which I haven't played because I haven't seen the movie)
Unlike some previous LEGO games, I'm not putting out this review or giving it a rating on Glitchwave until after I get the 100%. Thank you, LEGO Marvel's Avengers for making me not trust the first playthrough at all. Scratch that I'm completely ready to say "fuck this game"

+ They FIXED the hint system; instead of being a thing you can hit in the world itself, it's now a little pop-up telling you to click in the left stick
+ I CANNOT overstate how much of an improvement this is, because the old system tended to block the thing it was trying to tell you how to do
+ Comic book-style menus and HUD are super-cool and make me wonder why it took so long to happen
+ If you pause the game, you can see a trading card for your current character, which lists all of their abilities (and some backstory and debut comic)
+ There's a map again, unlike LEGO Marvel's Avengers (I wouldn't have mentioned this at all if LMA and Dimensions hadn't happened)
+ The hub is varied and exciting, rather than just "all of Manhattan again"; also, it's continuous without any loading screens (looking at you, LEGO Batman 3)
+ There's no bullshit like the other games where you have to complete the story in order to freely select which character to play as in the hub
+ The game now gives you the option to teleport back to the beginning of a race if you fail it
+ Some legitimately fun alternate reality/timeline versions of characters (Captain Avalon, Spider-Man Noir, cowboy Captain America, and so on)
+ The new side missions where you have to talk to a bunch of civilians are really neat (because the writing for it is legitimately funny more often than not)
+ Extra levels focused on minor characters, hosted by my girl Gwenpool (since Deadpool is a dirty mutant and Marvel hates mutants now)
+ Gwenpool's character and voice actress in this game are 10/10 and the only reason I didn't have a negative point about the mission where you face the giant fire guy
+ One of these levels is focused on the illest niggas, King Arthur and Merlin
+ More team-up attacks from more varied characters than LEGO Marvel's Avengers had (and a higher variety of generic ones)
+ The first level is new and exciting off the bat (there's never been a LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy level before)
+ Guardians of the Galaxy western level was sick
+ Noir level was neato
+ Egypt level was great
+ Mr. Blue Sky and Come and Get Your Love are in the game (but I think they spent their entire audio budget on them)
- A VERY significant chunk of the voice acting in this game is TERRIBLE (THANK YOU, VOICE ACTOR STRIKE)
- Voice volume balance is absolutely awful; one person will speak at a reasonable volume and THE NEXT ONE WILL BE EXTREMELY LOUD FOR NO REASON
- Some characters use the movie designs and others don't for seemingly no reason
- The post-level "unlocked a character" screen takes too fucking long; the slot rumbles for fucking ever but if you skip it you'll have no fucking clue what you've unlocked
- The new grapple feature sucks and just adds an extra step before the finisher move (and you tend to do it when you want to interact with an object)
- The boss battles have been revamped but now they're just "mash X until your thumb falls off"
- Vehicles still suck
- Marvel's ban on mutants and the Fantastic Four means they have to use garbage instead (Kamala Khan is a disgusting millennial before we even get into the terrorism)
- Shit characters like Kamala Khan get more levels than characters people actually like, like Daredevil or even fucking Iron Man and the Hulk
- And, of course, AFTER the game is out, Disney buys 21st Century Fox, so the ban on mutants and the Fantastic Four can finally end
- The second level has a GODAWFUL underwater section
- After Chronopolis is completed and until you complete the next level, there is a slow-ass pan around the city every time you boot up the game
- That may not sound so bad, but this is the first time you're given completely free reign to explore the city of cities, and the game is prone to crashing
- The Symbiote Surprise level glitched near the beginning; the button (9:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNrNi1gb8FE ) did nothing and I had to restart the level
- (+ I didn't have to do the Electro 2099 fight again though which was N I C E)
- Fighting symbiotes is FUCKING ANNOYING
- The arena level is fucking terrible (the boss is CONSTANTLY shielding and doing dumb fucking attacks so you have to just wait around for hours for him to drop shield)
- In most games, you'd do something specific to stop his invincibility; in this game you just WAIT
- Also reflecting the laser is godawful (oh you got into position a picosecond after the attack started? WAIT FIVE MINUTES FOR THE ATTACK TO STOP AND TRY AGAIN)
- And GOD FORBID Captain America actually fucking raise his shield instead of just fucking grappling an enemy
- Every time The Hulk dies, he turns back into Bruce Banner and you have to sit through the fucking transformation sequence again
- Transformation characters have been fucking awful in all of the LEGO Marvel games and they somehow made one worse???
- SERIOUSLY NO ONE FUCKING WANTS TO PLAY AS BRUCE BANNER OR PETER PARKER OR TONY STARK STOP FORCING TRANSFORMATIONS ON US ALL THE FUCKING TIME
- Yes, it's a neat animation to see ONCE; seeing it constantly is fucking garbage and makes it so I consciously avoid those characters
- The Atlantis level wasn't good
- The boss battle against the big pink guy kind of sucked

GAME CRASHES:
1. Right after answering the phone call JARVIS wouldn't shut up about (1 hour in)
2. Flying around Chronopolis (7 hours in)
3. Just after I finished a side mission (8 hours in)

I dropped the fuck out of this game on 31 January 2018, and didn't get back to it until
I am not going to go for 100%. I talked shit about LEGO Marvel's Avengers, but that game didn't piss me off until after I beat the main story and started going for 100%. This game pissed me off midway through the story, which is undeniably worse.

Half of the levels are neat as fuck, half are fucking terrible. The entire game is bogged down with repetitive animations and sequences that take far too long. Watching characters unlock after a level is completed, for example, is infuriatingly long-winded. Characters like Spider-Man and Iron Man are completely unplayable because every time you try to switch characters, you will instead switch to useless-ass Peter Parker and Tony Stark (also a problem in LEGO Marvel's Avengers). Combat has been changed so it's not just "punch a guy and he dies", but now it's just "punch a guy fifty times and he dies". They made combat take longer; they didn't make it more fun.
This would have been a great game if it had been made in 2013. The levels and ideas are more interesting than the original LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but the game itself is worse. The voice acting is terrible, and almost every single thing was changed not to be more interesting or challenging, but simply to take longer.
HOWEVER, in spite of what I said, I appreciated a lot of things about this game. The side quests and alternate versions of characters were great, and like half of the levels were good. I don't know.
6/10