tldr videogame curation
melbourne, australia

Platform: PlayStation 4

Tone, visuals, atmosphere and music are back to Diablo’s dark roots. Unfortunately the pacing, activities and uneven design quality (not to mention monetisation) become old pretty quickly. Feels more like a checklist than an epic journey, but it’ll probably be a good game in a year or two.

Impossibly good looking, creative worldbuilding & visual design, considering its a studio debut. Combat is cool, exploration is OK, puzzles are varied and good. English VA is intolerable. Pretty cool.

A simplified and more arcadey MH:W. Combat feels a bit more dynamic, navigation and traversal is easier/better, story is still mediocre. A good port considering its origins, and a pretty good game.

A lot of Nioh buildcrafting stuff has been simplified, some new stuff has been added. Morale system is clever, forcing further exploration. Combat is very satisfying. Story is passable. Good game.

Loses some of the fat of its predecessor, and takes a bunch from DOOM (2016). Undoubtedly fun, but cringey dialogue and characters can sometimes make it a bit hard.

Somewhere between Journey and BOTW, but with a tighter and shorter focus. Great to look at, fun and satisfying to play. Could see it being repetitive and unrewarding for some, but its core is a nice.

Visceral, satisfying combat, sublime art, great sound/music and a good challenge. Relatively unforgiving but ultimately very rewarding. An extraordinarily cinematic, violently masterful blast.

You know what it is. Not as good as Odyssey, and that wasn’t particularly good either. They have to look at refocusing and reinventing the franchise at some point… right?

Cool game, but peaks early and feels like an explosion of ideas never quite came together. Great to look at and feels quite nice, but ultimately not particularly satisfying or compelling. Brief fun.

I struggle to think of a franchise I have less interest in than COD, but MW2s DMZ mode is surprisingly fun. A more accessible Tarkov, simplifying the systems all the way down, potentially too far.