Alastor

Death Stranding 2 is great but it's also worse than the first game for the reasons you (and I probably, story aside) would recommend it to new players, unfortunately for me, the friction is part of what made DS1, that and the fact that because it was so rough the act of helping someone just had so much more weight. That aspect isn't completely gone, you still build community stuff, including a bloody monorail this time, this is also part of the smoothing of edges but I can't deny it's satisfying to have your hard work of building it rewarded with those BIG HAULS which is still very Death Stranding.

The combat is also better, I'm not sure if I'd put this down as more smoothing because honestly, there was a struggle with the Mules in DS1 but they weren't really THAT big a deal, this game tuns each camp into some sort of MGSV simulator, which I'll take. Better when you have more delivery rewards (another undeniable improvement in DS2) including throwable Pizza dough and martial arts learnt from Mamoru Oshii himself, amazing cutscene too.

Great game, just inferior to DS1 imo.

Playing a cute little SNES game during commute/break hours called Pocky and Rocky, it's a scrolling shooter where you play as a cute raccoon or shrine maiden and go through 5 levels and shoot in all 360 degrees at enemies. Cute sprites betray how hard this game can get, it's not like Gradius where you die in one hit but you get overwhelmed pretty quickly and getting hit makes you lose power in your shot upgrades. It's a unique game for me, I've not played a game where you have free movement and shooting like this that wasn't a rail shooter. There's a really good looking remaster on console/steam, so I'll wait for the sale to get it, but it looks great.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is now free from PS3 jail, I don't think it's a top MGS game overall like I did at the time when I thought it was a series ending, MGS5 has way better gameplay and a better story (4 shits on almost every aspect of 2 for me, like Kojima was ashamed of it at the time), but there's no denying this being back is a good thing, to top it off, we have the Game Boy Colour game on there, which is very underrated if only because it's rare and no one has played it, crazy good for a GBC game.

We're getting both an old Dead or Alive release and a new one, excellent news because DoA is the most fun button mashing FG for me, very fun to watch too with how much of a spectacle it is as well.

Legacy of Kain Defiance Remastered finally brings the whole series (bar the dubious canon status of Blood Omen 2 I think?) of LEgacy Kain to modern consoles, if you like a good story then goingthrough them all is a good time I think, you might even like the gameplay heh

The new Castlevania looks excellent, I'm just confused as to why Trevor apparently looks 99% like Sonia Belmont?

I am a bit surprised they're remaking old God of War trilogy, like sure it'll be cool but what happened to Nu Gow?

Very high odds on being Ys, Adol regularly ends up drifting ashore.

Edit - Ys 8, all in 😤

This is the inventing game isn't it? Wanted to play it for ages, low key Dark Cloud as well

Citadel is amazing, I don't remember if it's part of the DLC or not but try and find Grunt and get his recap on his night out, it's fucking hilarious.

Also help I'm absolutely glued to Wuthering Waves, I am going to spend so much money if I'm not careful…