Not the best game in the series, but not the worst either. Fine main story, good side stories, solid soundtrack with very lazy new tracks, most of which were just pasted from other games without any changes. If you love the series, then you will like this game. If you played the original on PS4, then you might not like the remake, because it's not so much a remake, but a direct port with bugs from Unreal Engine.

I like the Black Ops series because I like the Cold War setting, and mainstream games in this setting are pretty rare. The first Black Ops was good because it collected all the clichés and tropes of fictional works about this period and made them into a spectacular action that did not take itself too seriously. Black Ops Cold War basically does the same thing, but narrows the timeline to the first half of the 1980s and takes on a more serious narrative tone. Otherwise, this is the same spectacular and varied attraction as the first game.

Once every one or two years, an inexplicable desire to play Assassin's Creed hits me, despite the fact that I do not like this series very much. This time when it hit me, I went to Vallhalla. Not getting what I wanted from Vallhalla, I went to Syndicate, and... Yeah, it's definitely mid-2010s Assassin's Creed. Lots of map icons, a three-button combat system, a beautiful city that's fun to navigate around, and not yet completely missing staged cut-scenes and missions. You don’t get much pleasure from the gameplay, but it doesn’t tire you either. Decent AAA-timekiller.

It's an emotional rollercoaster. The story is bigger than in Trails from Zero, but still very personal, with the city of Crosbell at the center of everything - the real protagonist of this dilogy. And it's a great story with a well-crafted narrative, covering not only the story dialogues with cutscenes, but also the gameplay, sincere emotional moments and ambiguous characters. And the soundtrack, Lord, this soundtrack. Amazing.

Trails of Cold Steel I-II are amazing games that do everything the Sky trilogy and the Zero-Azure dilogy do, but much, MUCH worse.

The game has significantly increased in scale compared to the previous ones, from which the quality has suffered greatly. A bunch of characters are thrown at you, both minor and major. In Trails in the Sky, you had two protagonists, and as the story progressed, you gradually got to know the new main characters. In Trails from Zero, you had four protagonists who developed through active interaction with each other and those around them. In Trails of Cold Steel, NINE protagonists are immediately thrown at you, and lately two more. Naturally, they do not really have time to develop them, and at best they turn out to be a little more developed than standard archetypes.

The plot structure is very clear and always follows the same pattern in the first game and in the second, because of which you very quickly understand what awaits you in the chapter as soon as you start it. In the story itself, the balance between everyday life and plot moments is very poorly maintained, which is why the latter feel less important and significant than they should, and simply dissolve into the routine. Dialogues just degraded.

The fights here are simplified to the limit, these are literally the only games in the series where blasting bosses with an ult is a working tactic. The maximum that the bosses in this game can offer you as a challenge is to heal yourself every second turn and kill the whole party with one blow, which, however, is easily managed by a certain character and certain consumables.

And the plot itself and its presentation, dear God. The series has had its own clichés and conventions since the first game, which is normal. Cold Steel takes these clichés and takes them to the point of absurdity. In past games, heroes from hopeless situations were often rescued by other characters - in Cold Steel, these other characters will come running to the rescue even through insurmountable barriers. In past games, characters loved to give motivational speeches - in Cold Steel, characters will answer any questions with motivational speeches. In order for the game to turn into a self-parody, it remains only to start breaking the fourth wall.

Cold Steel is positioned as the entry point for the series for newcomers, and technically it is, it has almost no characters from past arcs, and in general, the first two games form a self-contained story. But please don't start the series with Cold Steel. Firstly, they do not hesitate to spoil Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure, and secondly, these are very weak games in themselves, which can discourage all desire to continue further acquaintance with the series. Dissapointing, just dissapointing.

You stab, you shoot, you parry. It's literally the entire combat system of the Resident Evil 4 remake, and it's fucking awesome. A very fun game.

The Last of Us is a great game if you like aggressive stealth. Battles with infected opponents are not very interesting, because they usually follow the same pattern, but in the segments with people the game flourishes, especially in the chapter for Ellie, who is faster and meaner than the hulking Joel. Opponents try to get around you, surround you, drive you out of cover, while they themselves prefer not to stick out if they know that they are in your sight, and you usually have limited ammunition, and a direct confrontation here is certain death. What I definitely did not expect from The Last of Us when I started playing it was an interesting action, but here we are.

The Bloober Team are either incompetent or just hate people, especially traumatized people. Someone please tell their writers about this little thing called therapy. I am sure they will discover many new things for themselves.

Another walking simulator, after which you begin to appreciate Firewatch even more.

This game is definitely better than Cold Steel I-II. It follows the same structure as the Cold Steel I, but fixes its mistakes and smooths out what it can't fix. The number of characters has decreased, but their development has improved. There are now four protagonists (plus two more coming later), and they are interesting characters with their own arcs, wow. The plot continues the global story that began in the Cold Steel I-II, so it doesn’t really shine, but at least it’s told better. And the combat system was fixed. Not a great game, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Thanks to DOOM (2016), I finally realized that arena shooters are not my genre. But it was fun, a little.

Go fuck yourself, Brucie.

An interesting concept with a curious combat system, which, unfortunately, was let down by the implementation. A very repetitive game that doesn't offer any challenge and almost no interesting combat situations (like the one where you don't have a gun but have a flashlight, and your partner has a gun but no flashlight, and you need to coordinate your actions to fend off enemies). Most of the game is walking through the same forest, solving primitive puzzles and very simple identical skirmishes with enemies and occasionally physical objects. As a result, the game only really blossoms in DLC, which has exactly what the main campaign lacked so much: variety. An interesting but rather tedious experience.

By the way, the licensed music in the game is pretty good, and in many ways influenced my musical taste back then, in 2010. Thanks for this.