2022.5 | Mass Effect Andromeda

I wanted to give this another go after mass effect legendary edition to finish the mass effect re-plays and unfortunately, while not BAD, this game's characters and writing is pretty flat and awkward at times. Lack of polish don't help when camera and characters are teleporting or molding into each other at times during cut scenes. And faces, though not as bad as early day GIFs are still pretty awkward. Overall pretty rough and flat so never comes close to original trilogy.
One area it does beat it handily is the combat, really fun, fast and satisfying.

I also don't think open world helps especially with so much fetch side quests, it's just too many markers and too much random shit to do, stories and characters lose weight as it becomes hours before you interact with them again.

5/10 but it was good to Platinum the series. Gonna do same with dragon age at some point but first I'm gonna go for the FROM games.

2022.4 | Forza Horizon 5

I did all the races, discovered all roads, most of the extras like story, and good bunch of the speed traps, jumps, those random activities. I'll still play this as a twitch watching / podcast listening game but that's enough stuff done especially with all main race series that I'm gonna call it "finished"..

I wrote about the game in my top games list, everything said there stands. My favourite Xbox franchise by far but hopefully they shake it up a bit more next release and if they pretty much just change the map again, a neon city map (Tokyo inspired) with a country side aspect would be cool.

2022.3 | God of War: Chains of Olympus

Damn, I thought after re-playing "yeah this was not a bad VITA game" only to look it up and it was a PSP game?! Holy crap, well done Ready At Dawn.

Less challenging from puzzles to combat but you'd expect that when people had to play it on a handheld. It just translates as "ez" when you got a proper controller / screen with the PS3 version.

Bit of epic boss fights, epic scenery, Kratos screaming at things, the usual. Good fun still.

2022.2 | God Of War 1 HD

i will forever hate sony for not subtitling the soft re-boot. i'm talking about the original PS2 god of war game in HD for the PS3 (through PS Now streaming).

this was part of my trophy clean-up. i had most of the trophies and no way was i not having this classic game in my platinum collection so just re-played it for under 5 hour speed run + rest of missing trophies

this is one of those games you play as an adult and wonder how the fuck you ever beat it as a kid. especially the rings of pandora challenge i was like "wait wut" even as an adult, i had to get the guide out. granted i was going for the under 5 hour completion trophy so didn't want to spend time to figure shit out but even knowing the solution, i was like "how the F did i ever solve this as a kid?!?". just more proof i'm getting old and dumb.

outside that, combat is the perfect mix of juuuust involved enough but not so much you gotta memorise combos or some shit (just 2 or 3 easy ones that become muscle memory anyway) and honestly holds up well. i still think there is room for a throwback classic god of war style game as a spin-off title or something. the fixed camera as well aged a lot more gracefully than i remember and in fact makes the framing of some scenes very beautiful and artistic thanks to it.
this is something i really appreciated as even in game with full camera control, i try to frame the action well. but obviously when the developers have full control of camera, they can do cooler things (zooming, panning etc).

anyway, still holds up extremely well, and based on these two games so far, is easily my GOTY.

2022.1 | Coffe Talk

i can't remember how the itch.io of this game got my attention ages ago. as i don't like coffee, or talking. but i thought this game was a cool concept between the multi-race society and the fun little mini-game of mixing things to make the right brew.

and yeah in the full game the concept is realised well enough i had no problem sitting through the visual novel between its varied cast of characters, mostly well flowing dialogue and a cute little 'twist' enough i ended up platinum'ing it.