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The Surge This was a thing. A sci-fi Soulslike is a cool concept, and one I'd like to see more of, but this game is just lots of interesting ideas and systems, but with a pretty clunky implementation, it's also a bit of a grindfest. The whole "target different body parts" is an interesting idea but most weapons feel really clunky and slow, heavy weapons specially, feel completely useless with how slow they are and how easy it is to get staggered. Leveling up is different too, you don't put points into stats, instead, you level up your energy, which allows you to equip more implants, which is what determines your stats, want more HP? Get HP implants, or stamina, or energy, etc. Implants are how you build your character. This is part of the grind, not enough HP? Farm for a better health implant. Need more energy? Farm for a better energy implant, repeat for any implant you may need. Right from the start, you don't get your full gear set, you need to farm for the missing pieces, more grind. The whole idea is neat, want a specific helmet? Target the enemy's head! This applies to the different gear pieces, except once you get it, you get the schematic, then you have to farm for materials to craft or upgrade each piece. Got a trophy for clearing a dark area with a specific weapon type simply because I couldn't get the chest piece (which has your lamp) to drop, instead got a weapon that glowed and decided that was good enough. There are different areas, but within each area it's super easy to get lost because everything looks the same. Last boss was a pain, actually uninstalled the game for a while, then today I went back and managed to defeat it, I was ready to give up again when I saw it had a second phase lol. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one, second is supposed to be better so I'm looking forward to it. Grade: F

Ghost of Yotei Good game, as I'm sure will come as a surprise to absolutely everyone. Its tale of revenge is not original, but it's pretty well told, and manages to not just fall into the grimdark take on it like some other Sony studio's game... I'm not in love with it though like I was the first one. I enjoyed it, but there were little niggles that hampered the experience for me. Like there were numerous times in the game where it felt like it was setting you up to make a choice about what to do, but then no choice was forthcoming. Which is fine, I don't need choices in all my games, but it felt a little like a bait and switch each time it happened. I wonder if they were originally planning to have player choices at those moments and then changed course during development. And the combat... I like it on paper, but in practice I felt like it was unfair. Like 75% of the times I got hit I felt like it was the game's fault, not mine. It was frustrating, and not in a good way. Overall though the game is good, I enjoyed my time with it, there's stuff to do in the world but it's not too cluttered, it manages to chart a different course than Tsushima and not just be a repeat. It's number 6 on my top 10 for the year right now. Grade: B+