VR game that creates minigames based on FNAF Sister Location, Pizzeria Simulator, and even Security Breach. The creativity and range of the various minigames are a welcome change. However, I would have liked a few more direct inspirations such as the restaurant management sim and office work gameplay from Pizzeria Sim. Another missed opportunity is the lack of a challenge/endless mode for some minigames. Most are either a 3 – 4 round based game and/or objective limited. I very easily would have spent far more hours in this game if I could try to get a high score in an endless mode of the food service mini games, for example. Speaking of high scores, any mini game that has some sort of score listed during the game doesn’t seem to get saved or posted anywhere locally that I could see. Hopefully an update or DLC will introduce these but I won’t hold my breath. If you are a fan of FNAF lore and secrets, this game does offer more with it’s story and feels much more engaging than Help Wanted 1.

Recommend? Yes. All in all, such an enjoyable experience but still has room for improvement.

Rating? 8/10

Beaten > Completed
I’ve finally started my cleanup of the Yakuza series and the start of my views of each entry. The general grind to completion wasn’t too bad, save for the weapon shop related completion tasks. Then came the critical fights… Each challenge requires a certain set of criteria and skill loadouts to complete and a lot of the early ones are grueling. Oddly enough once you get to the final set it gets laughably easier in comparison. Overall, my view of the game didn’t change too much other than the fact that I realized how much I sucked at playing Majima.

Beaten > Completed
Though Kiwami doesn’t require the same critical battle that 0 did, but it has something far far worse… Haruka’s Requests. A string of mandatory requests to improve your relationship with your newly “adopted” daughter. This doesn’t sound inherently bad until the little child wants you to win exorbitant amounts of yen in various gambling games or challenge extremely difficult pool challengers. The latter made me lose a little hope for my completion of the game. This is just the post game content. Regoing through the series has made me realize how uninspired the various ultimate heat actions mechanic was and how absolutely dreadful the car sequence on Legendary truly is. Not a terrible game, but definitely lowered my personal view on it.

With the news of a new DS game coming out I absolutely had to finally get around to playing the original strand game. First off, whether you like the game or not, it introduces a very interesting mechanic that is fairly innovational for gaming (or at least something I haven’t come across to this degree). That innovation is creating a single player experience that still has you affect other’s playthroughs and theirs for you. Anytime you connect an area to the chiral network ( a main objective in the game), you are then connecting your built structures to other’s worlds and vice versa. Yet, there is no direct interaction. You’ll never PVP or quite co-op with others. Instead structures being used will receive likes, which have their own benefits, and you can even complete deliveries for others that either have lost or dropped off some cargo. It’s such a rewarding experience knowing something you built is being used by others. So much so that I was obsessed with finishing all of the predesignated roads available so that other’s journeys may be just a bit easier. The general gameplay isn’t too exciting but often a something bit of a relaxing yet challenging journey and delivery system. Thus, don’t expect much combat, and when there is it’s not always so exciting. However, getting through each challenge (a sometimes literal climbing of the hill) gives a nice sense of accomplishment.
Story, it’s about as weird as an experience as one may expect knowing Kojima’s games. It introduces a sort of post-apocalyptic America with beings that come from beyond death and brings out philosophies of life, death, solitude, and togetherness. However, I could care less for a lot of the characters in this game. I could care less about most of the random people I was connecting (celebrity cameo or not) or most of their stories. Most of the main stay characters act either obtusely odd or downright rude, especially to the main character who has a known phobia of touching people. Damn if they don’t try every instance they can to get as uncomfortably close to the MC every chance they get though. Fragile was the worst for me as she was always offering a living insect like creature in our face then the camera focuses on her eating it. She’d also repeat an annoying catchphrase and to be honest I just had a personal bias for hating this character. There is also far too much lore to read than I can currently intake. Literal paragraphs per email, record, even dialogue. It just gets to be exhausting, especially with my waning of reading interest in games over the years. Even still, there is just far too much.

There is a bunch of annoyances that will alter be addressed in the director’s cut. For starters, navigating the various menu’s is a pain, especially for tutorials (in which there are many). Fast travel is a pain as other people’s shelters will get in the way of main game areas, and text is far too big.

Recommend? It’s not for everyone, certainly, but it if you can be open to it it does offer a certain charm you will have trouble finding elsewhere. It in no way will ever overtake the MGS series for me but a worthy entry from the, sometimes overly praised but still fairly deserving, Hideo Kojima.
Rating? 7.5/10

Praise be the save transfer system and the auto-unlocking achievements that follow. Literally saving me an entire playthrough and several buildings of achievements. As far as I can tell, a lot of the game remains fairly similar but has some great quality of life additions as well as some more content. Quality of life includes the ability to quickly access main game fast travel locations (once unlocked), easier to parse menu system, and more readable yet smaller text, among other changes I can’t particularly recall at this moment.

The new content includes a metal gear inspired set of side missions that introduce more character development for a pre-existing character, new pre designated roads that ease travel across various areas, racing missions, and new vehicles/structures that give some refreshing new ways to cross the lands. Unfortunately, being a new game, only certain structures carry over so you won’t be able to rely on every old route you are used to. This does however create an opportunity to explore new routes and ways of traversing them. The racing missions were generally enjoyable, though I wish they placed a storage system nearby to make rebuilding it more convenient. Especially considering you need to bring a vehicle there to donate it. The challenges have you take on each setup 3 times, once with each different class of vehicle, but has an odd order for them. Starts with the fairly quick bike, then to the very drifty roadster, and finally to the obtusely slow truck. Starting with the truck may have been a bit easier.
All the new content means a few more achievements, but nothing too dire unless you are pretty adverse to the racing missions.

Recommend? Yes, a much improved version of the best strand game.
Rating? 8/10.

A relatively short Yakuza game that bridges the events of Yakuza 6, 7, and leads into 8. We follow Kiryu, a man believed to be dead, now going as Joryu who essentially works as an undercover agent. His tale of being a man with no name feels pretty in line with the strong narrative the series is known for. Though the game is generally shorter, there is not much skimping on side content though the substories feel considerably reduced. We also get a new agent fighting style, alongside the standard Dragon style, that relies on interesting gadgets for fighting. Some are far more useful than the others. Both in terms of gameplay and narrative I felt a strong resemblance with Kiwami 2, but without all the poor tasteless executions the past game had made. Even with the final boss he felt inspired (in a good way) of Ryuji Goda. This game also has one of the saddest moments in gaming and is the second highest game in terms of tears (you just can’t break Crisis Core for me). If you have made the lengthy Yakuza journey that I have throughout all the games, and just a Like A Dragon series fan in general, I very much urge you to play this game. It’s importance for Kiryu can not be understated enough.

Recommend? Yes, absolutely. Fans especially.
Rating? 9/10.

Beaten > Completed
So far, the Yakuza game that took the greatest hit from replaying it is this game. The new feel the heat system does not improve much (and in some ways more boring) than that of the last. What makes this game take a downfall? It’s not the story, for me at least. Instead, I found the minigames to mostly be boring and far too long winded. Sure we got the reintroduction of things like Cabaret Club, but it also brought forth the monstrosity that is Bouncer Battles (among others). Bouncer battles specifically are a series of fighter challenges that overstay it’s welcome and forces you to do a very large number a repeated number of times for each difficulty variation. Especially when you introduce the various secret bosses to them it becomes fairly suffering. Then we get down to various mechanics including limited stomach space (making completing restaurants worse than the alcohol consumption limits and far less rewarding).

The fight system takes an interesting route by focusing on weapons. This would be fine if any non owned weapons did not just slip out of your hands while stubbing your toe during a fight. Not to mention most don’t seem to pack the fire power you would think a game focused on them would. It’s interesting… just not well executed.
Still enjoy the game, but it probably drops down the second or third worst rated Yakuza to date. Luckily for it, it is hard to surpass the likes of Yakuza 5 for me.