Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@LtSarge Glitches, glitches everywhere, lol! Started the opening section, the writing isn't as bad as it was in the trailers, but I've had to close the game twice due to graphical glitches. Weird lighting flickering, certain particle effects that stuck to a character, even though they weren't performing a move, and one time everything just went dark, and I still don't know if that was supposed to be intentional or not.

@Octane Well that's not a good start lol. Are you playing it on PS5 and it's still that bad?

Shadow of the Colossus
Platform: PS4
Completion Status: Beat it several times, and attained a Platinum trophy after completing all trophy challenges; 40+ hours of playtime to plat

When Wander entered The Forbidden Lands, the first thing that stood out to him was the uncanny way in which the sun washed out the desolate fields and hills around him. Everything about this place seemed somehow wrong. He'd stolen the Ancient Sword and ridden his loyal steed Agro to this place, the abode of Dormin, against the will of his own people. Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures, however, and if he ever began to doubt his resolve, even a cursory glance back at the figure wrapped in a blanket behind reminded him that no other acceptable path lay before him.

Arriving at the shrine, Wander dismounts from Agro and gently carries over the blanketed form to the altar at the head of the shrine. Throwing off the fabric reveals the lifeless form of a beautiful young girl. Wanders steals a sad glance at the girl, Mono, before an agitated cry from Agro forces him to turn his attention to the strange, shadowy figures materializing in the shrine around him. Wander quickly dispels these entities by unsheathing his Ancient Sword and using its ability to channel the light of the sun.

Upon doing this, a playful, malicious cacophany of voices suddenly flood Wander's mind. He has gained the attention of Dormin. Wander explains to the legion of disquieting voices that the girl was sacrificed because she had a cursed fate, and that he set out to these lands when he heard there existed an entity who was able to control the souls of the dead. Dormin agrees to help the boy perform the forbidden ritual and reclaim the maiden's soul... if he does what Dormin asks. Wander is tasked with destroying a series of 16 enormous stone idols that line the walls of the shrine. But the only way these idols can be destroyed by human hands, it's explained, is by slaying colossi who wander The Forbidden Lands that are the living incarnations of these idols.

The price you pay may be heavy, Dormin warns the boy.

Wander grips his sword and icily replies: it doesn't matter.

Thus opens Shadow of the Colossus, Fumito Ueda's legacy-defining 2005 PS2 classic. It's an incredibly strong foundation for the rest of the game, which, indeed, tasks the player with seeking out and killing sixteen colossi who are dotted across an expansive world. This is not really a story-driven experience, but snappy pacing, strong atmosphere, and the almost fairy tale-like narrative combine to create a compelling experience nonetheless. SotC eschews excessive tutorialization and, after briefly explaining the controls of the game and how the player can focus the rays of the sun to point them in the direction of their next target, it lets them off the hook. Although there's arguably not a lot to be found in this game. The game design is both ambitious and also weirdly restrictive: exploration is largely pointless because there's little to be found in the environments other than fruit trees and lizards. Eating fruit will VERY slowly increase the player's health, and killing lizards in order to collect their tails will even more slowly increase their stamina gauge. Other than engaging with these arguably unrewarding collectibles, the only thing for the player to do is to track down and kill the colossi.

Thankfully, the fantastic environmental design makes the task of finding them engaging on its own, and the battles, like in a Zelda game, are more like puzzles than actual combat. Wander can only slay a colossus by stabbing it in various peak points across its body, but just the act of being able to grab onto these creatures and scale them requires a lot of "out of the box" thinking, which often requires some form of interaction with the environments you fight the colossi in. Design-wise, these fights feel like the natural evolution of boss encounters in the early 3D Zelda games on the Nintendo 64, but with a sense of scope that wasn't really possible on that hardware. The actual act of slaying these creatures mostly involves the player hanging on for dear life as the colossi wildly trash around, tossing poor Wander to and fro as the player slowly inches him across their bodies and prays to whatever deity they choose to believe in that their stamina meter will survive the process (the meter recovers when the player stops gripping the colossi's body, so savvy players will quickly learn there are places on these creatures which are more stable than others, allowing them to recover their strength before going in for the kill).

The variety one will encounter in the game's sixteen bosses is pretty strong as well. The first few bosses are fairly simple mechanically and aesthetically, but the player will encounter, variously, a Dune-like sand worm that chases the player from under the sand, a flying wyrm that'll need to be sniped in the air from horseback in order to bring it down to the surface, electric eels who attack the player from under the water, etc. Despite the player having access to a very basic moveset (Wander can grab environments, stab enemies he's holding onto, fire arrows from a bow, and roll; that's it), the game continually finds fresh ways to keep this boss rush from feeling samey, and aside from maybe the very first colossi, all of them are marvelously iconic enemies.

So, these sixteen bosses, and the process of finding them, will happily occupy 6 - 8 hours of the player's time. It's extremely well-paced, the fights are epic, and despite the ending being a bit baffling the first time one sees it, the strong emotions it evokes still make it satisfying enough, as one does not expect myth or fairy tales to wrap up conventionally. End the game here, and you have a real solid couple of evenings on your Playstation console.

Or you could... chase the trophies.

I won't front: I don't regret going for the platinum trophy at all, but this is NOT a good trophy list, and the process of achieving them kind of destroys the experience over time for a variety of reasons. Firstly, you're going from a snappy sub-10 hour experience to a 40+ hour one where you're just continually engaging with the same content over and over. The once impressive and cinematic fights with the colossi will lose their luster as you fight to shave time off in the process of completing time trials and, hell, just grinding the same bosses over and over near the end to max out your health and stamina (you can probably achieve the same thing by eating all of the fruit and hunting all of the lizards in this game, but believe me when I say that's a fate far too cruel to inflict on yourself). If you're like me, you'll also find yourself raging at Wander's inability to stop stumbling around like an idiot or stab a moving target he's literally clinging to. Nothing is more frustrating than building up the charge for a powerful stab, only for the colossi to move even slightly and cancel your attack animation. This is less of an issue on the normal difficulty, but on hard, these creatures are shaking their bodies more often than not. IMO the exacting specifications of a time trial are a poor match for fights that, once you learn the mechanics, are largely dependent on luck in order to succeed.

The bigger issue, putting aside the grinding of identical content and time trials that are a poor match for the game design, is that most of these trophies don't really open up avenues of new appreciation for the player. A few do, and these trophies are genuinely cool, like one that requires the player to kill a certain colossus without triggering the cinematic cutscene that breaks its wrist armor and allows Wander to climb up its arm. I appreciate challenges like that. But most of these trophies don't ask the player to do anything that'll increase their appreciation of the game.

Not the worst trophy list in the world (there are no online trophies or inane trophies like "run [x] miles"), but I don't think this is a trophy set that ultimately improves the player's experience of the game as they complete it.

SotC suffered a lengthy development cycle where it was retooled as a single-player adventure after the original concept of creating a multiplayer follow-up to his previous cult classic, Ico, didn't pan out. This release timing is actually fairly appropriate, since SotC always felt like it emphasized scale to the detriment of performance. Memories are often kind to older games we played in the past when new games weren't constantly put under a microscope and their performance deficits trumpeted out across the internet via blog posts, news articles, and social media videos, but even at the time, SotC felt ROUGH, with the game's framerate often running down close to single-digits when the player faced off against the game's massive bosses (imagine a first-party Sony game performing that way today! Words like "unplayable" and "scandalous" would be bandied about a lot, I guarantee you). The trade-off was battles on a scale unseen in other games released in that console generation. Another unusual aspect of the release was how it functioned like an open world, allowing the player to free roam across its expanses without encountering loading screens. As such, SotC always felt very much like a game that barely should have even run on the hardware, and was a late-generation PS2 release that arguably blurred the lines between PS2 and PS3 game development philosophies.

These performance anomalies were rectified in 2011 when Bluepoint Games remastered the original PS2 game for the PS3, allowing it to run at a much more stable framerate that didn't falter nearly as often and updating some of the basic texture work in the original to make it fit for release on Sony's first HD platform. It still wasn't a "pretty" game (the barren, PS2-era environments and bloom lighting that washed out details in the environments were still present, maintaining the look of the original game), but it felt like SotC had finally met the platform it probably should have released on in the first place. This seemed like it'd be the definitive version of the classic until Sony announced the 2018 release of a full-throated PS4 remake of the game.

While nearly identical to the original release content-wise (at least in terms of the core campaign), SotC on PS4 was very visually ambitious, being a ground-up reworking of the original game that updated it to current-gen standards. This reworking actually proved to be a little controversial in certain respects. For example, the harsh bloom lighting and striking contrast between light and dark in the original was replaced by gorgeous natural lighting that nevertheless changed the mood of the game's environments. Another change that prompted debate was the mush lusher environments in the PS4 remake. The Forbidden Lands in the PS2 version feel very empty and dead, although it's up for debate how much of that was artistic intention versus the game being designed around weak hardware at the time that wouldn't have been able to render such lush foliage. Although technical limitation and artistic intent needn't necessarily be a dichotomy: even if it was motivated by the limitations of the PS1, for example, the original Silent Hill would feel like a different game altogether without the voluminous fog effects (as unfortunate purchasers of the ill-fated Silent Hill HD Collection on PS3 and Xbox 360 discovered when that game removed much of Silent Hill 2's ominous overworld fog). In the same way, it could be argued that, even if hardware has advanced to the point now where it can render large quantities of lush greenery, this doesn't mean that updating the sparse environments of the PS2/PS3 original wasn't still working against the artistic impact of the older versions of the game.

However one ends up feeling about the updated look, it's unquestionably gorgeous. SotC went from being a particularly ugly (if ambitious) PS2 game to possibly one of the prettiest games on the Playstation 4 (most of the time, anyway; explore the more untapped regions of the The Forbidden Lands where they didn't expect players to go, and you'll see textures that looked like they were pulled directly from the PS2 original; but the same is true of most games, I imagine). This applies to the colossi as well: while their look is very faithful to the original models, the increase in detail, realistic fur effects, etc. all serve to make these creatures feel new again, and help to re-capture some of the awe-inspiring qualities they possessed in the original PS2 release. Wander's face (what little you see of it) is also significantly more emotive in this version of the game.

More should probably have been done with the feel of the game, however. Bluepoint has slightly updated the button mapping in a way that makes it feel more natural on a modern controller (right trigger versus the shoulder button for grabbing, or putting jump on the cross button versus triangle), but the awkward, clumsy way you interact with stuff in this game feels almost identical to the original. So it's still often kind of hard to know if you're actually gripping something when holding the grip button because of a lack of feedback. You practically have to throw yourself onto your horse Agro in order to successfully mount her. And, especially when climbing the colossi, as I mentioned before, Wander still feels less like a human and more a life-sized doll made of sand who can be wildly flopped around if the creature he has latched on to moves even an inch.

You adapt, of course, even if the game quickly loses its charm in time trials when the difference between a successful or unsuccessful battle can be determined by how violently the colossus you're on happens to fidget around while you're stabbing it to death, because the core experience is really engaging, but there's no escaping that this is a 2018 release that still feels like a janky PS2 game mechanically.

Probably the biggest disappointment of this remake, however, is just how unstable it is. Console games crashing is a fortunate rarity for me, but this game crashed no fewer than 14 times across my entire time with it. That's... bad, and the problem kept up even after I deleted and re-installed the game, so I don't think it's down to issues that might have cropped up when it was downloading to my console initially.

I should also mention the really evocative orchestral score, which sells the game as well as any other aspect of it. This is an OST that'll stick with you long after you've finished the game.

I've probably griped a lot in this review, but there's a reason I kept playing hours after I probably should have quit, despite not being much of a trophy hunter: Shadow of the Colossus, in spite of its flaws, is a rock-solid classic of the medium, and one of the first games that really made a serious attempt at using the technology that hosted it to create a truly artistically satisfying experience (crucially, without making the game itself boring). The remake itself, while perhaps a little too faithful mechanically, still does a great job of updating the game in such a way that a new generation of players can experience its timeless bosses and get swept up in the melancholic fantasy inherent in its setting.

A cool 7.5/10 for me.

@Th3solution Yeah, I'm cool with artistic expression when the game itself is still compelling to play. IMO, that's the big difference between something like those Fumito Ueda classics and games like Journey and Abzu, where the "gameplay" barely consisted of anything more than going forward for hours. Everything I've heard about RiME puts it into the Ueda camp, since it's driven by puzzles and exploration.

@Ralizah A fitting review of the seminal classic! A very enjoyable read and fair criticisms and praise.

I rank it somewhat higher, but I can’t argue with your points. When I looked at the trophy list, I knew it wasn’t in the cards for me to try the time trials, despite considering the game one of my all-time favorites. Time trials have never been a favorite of mine anyways.

Having played the original on PS2 (I skipped the PS3 version) I’m in the camp that is happy with the PS4 visual upgrades. I’d never considered the possibility that the bleaker colors and environments of the original may have been an artistic intent. The beauty portrayed through the remaster of the Forgotten Lands is one of the aspects of the game that made me enjoy it even more than the first time I played it.

The only thing better about my first playthrough back on PS2 was the jaw-dropping awe I felt when I came upon the first Colossus. It was back before billions of video review and internet pictures spoiled things and I had no idea what I was getting into. Like you mention in the review — for it’s chronology in the gaming timetable, it was an impressive feat.

And yes, fittingly to have the two reviews back to back, I think you’d enjoy RiME for it is more than just a ‘walk forward and get a clever artistic showpiece opened before you’ game and takes some real effort to solve the puzzles within.

Anyways, love the review! Thanks for sharing!

@Th3solution Thanks!

I would have ranked it higher in the past as well. I actually think it's much more impressive as a PS2 game, even though the PS4 version is vastly prettier. When I was a teenager, I was blown away by how cinematic and enthralling the battles were. Games were still a little awkward in general back then, so the controls weren't as immersion-breaking as they were here.

Really, though, despite my ragging on it, I think it speaks well to the timelessness of the game's design that they pretty much only updated the graphics, and it still impresses today.

And yeah, while I wanted to address the change in the games' aesthetic, I'm not sure preserving the look of the original would have been worth sacrificing the gorgeous natural lighting here. What is a remake, after all, if not a chance to do something different? It's always possible this is what the game would have looked like on PS2 if they had access to today's technology. And if not, the original is always available to people on PS2 and PS3.

Yeah, based on what I've seen and your review, I definitely think I'd like RiME. That timing is kind of a cool co-incidence, I agree.

Thanks so much for reading!

@Ralizah Funny, because I did get all the fruit and lizards during my last playthrough. I used a map, but it wasn't that hard if you know where they are located.

After reading PushSquare for about a year now, I finally decided to check out the forums. Here's a review I wrote earlier this year.

Game: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Review)
Platform: PS4- remastered version

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune laid the stepping stones for Naughty Dog's penchant of creating narratively driven 3rd person action-adventure games. Nathan Drake's debut adventure is an expertly crafted and linear adventure that takes the player on a rich and realised journey in pursuit of hidden treasure. Coupled with explosive gunfights and light platforming that sadly always tries to be more than what it should be, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a great game that occasionally stumbles due to flawed design choices.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune tells the story of adventurer, treasure hunter, and mass murderer Nathan Drake in his search for the fabled treasure of El Dorado along with journalist Elena Fisher and friend Victor Sullivan, more lovingly known as Sully. After discovering Sir Francis Drake's coffin that was buried at sea almost 400 years ago, Nate and Elena come across Sir Francis Drake's diary which leads them on a quest across Panama, the Amazon rainforest, and an undiscovered island in the Pacific Ocean to find the hidden treasure of El Dorado that Sir Francis Drake was after.

On the surface, this may seem like a classic and cliche tale of 3 adventures who sought treasure of enormous wealth, and it mostly is. Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan are obsessed with uncovering this secret treasure, and their attempted treasure hunt puts their lives and even Elena's at enormous risk. Their minds become telescopes, zoomed in on a treasure that they can't even be sure actually exists. The tale of treasure is rather simple here, and sadly Naughty Dog wasn't able to craft a narrative in this adventure that made me want to find El Dorado and the treasure that Nathan Drake sought after.

Another point of complaint regarding the narrative in this game comes down to its villains. Frankly speaking, until the end of the game, I wasn't really sure who the main antagonist was. There is Gabriel Roman a British treasure collector, Atoq Navarro, an archaeologist with extensive knowledge of the region and the fabled treasure of El Dorado, and finally, Eddy Raja, the leader of the pirate gang hired by Gabriel Roman to hunt down Nathan Drake and his buddies, while also having an interior motive to obtain that shiny gold.

The mix and clash of these three characters creates an incoherent mess in which I had no clue as to who is who, and more importantly, why these characters are doing what they are doing. The game fails to lay out a simple and organized idea when it comes to its antagonists, which really hurts the game's pacing and flow. And while the later chapters put an end to this confusion and sort out the fakes from the reals, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is plagued with a severe lack of clarity.

On the other hand, the protagonists of this tale are superbly written and voiced characters that I was invested in throughout my time with this game. Victor Sullivan is the old guard, the supporting pillar to Nate and Elena. He doesn't get a lot of screentime, but what he has is filled up with sarcastic dialogue and the flair of a man with a cigar that is a joy to listen to.

The standout characters in this game have to be our protagonist Nathan Drake and journalist Elena Fisher. Separated from each other, they are both fairly interesting characters and nothing that you haven't seen in a movie or videogame before. But combined together, their relationship and the way it develops over the course of the game is the most interesting aspect of this game's narrative.

When the game starts off, Nathan Drake seems annoyed to have to bring Elena along, while Elena wants to get a story for her producer to make into a documentary, documenting the search for El Dorado. This premise is great as Nathan and Elena only know as much about each other as the player does. This means that there are no secrets shared between the two, no past experiences to reference, only the present happenings that affect their relationship.

As the game progresses and the duo venture deep into uncharted lands, they begin to know more about each other, going as far as trusting one and other with their lives. This is best portrays during the part in the game where Nathan and Elena are along in deep caves without anyone else interrupting them. This leads to great character and in this case relationship development as the two can converse and interact with each other without outside interferences like a cutscene with the main villain or a radio message with Sully.

By the end of the game, Nate and Elena have been through so much with each other, it feels like their relationship arc has been fully maxed out, sowing the seeds for the Nate x Elena love story to continue its way throughout the rest of the series. This chapter of the relationship culminates in a beautiful ending and is something that everyone should experience and left me with a huge grin on my face.

There is another major flaw in the narrative of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Without spoiling too much, I will say that for the most part, Uncharted tries to be a realistic experience. Enemies are humans, you play as a human, the guns are guns that exist in real life, the locations are real-life places, and the treasures that you seek are loosely based on myths and mysteries that exist in the real world. So for the game to suddenly ditch this attempt to be grounded in realism and bring elements of the supernatural and paranormal into the forefront left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

There was no reason for this to take place and its introduction sorely lacked any kind of punch to compensate for its inclusion within the game's overarching narrative. In addition, it also ruins the cover-based shooter system that Uncharted is built upon because these enemies cant be handled in the same way that human enemies are. There was absolutely no need for this to be a part of the game, and to make matters even worse, it failed to deliver the spectacle it was brought in to do.

I don't want to go too deep into the concept of ludo-narrative dissonance because it's been talked about extensively and I'm sure that there are many articles or videos that will explain the concept if you are interested. But I will state that there is a lot of ludo-narrative dissonance in this game and any Uncharted game for that matter. This means that there is a conflict between the narrative told through gameplay and the narrative told through story. In short, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune tells the tale of an ordinary man who seems to care about life and humanity, as seen with his actions towards the end of the game, yet this is the same man that throughout 22 chapters, goes on a mass-murdering spree of anyone who dares stand in his way.

I understand and acknowledge that Naughty Dog was kind of forced into this situation by having to have some sort of action in their game, and it doesn't really affect one's enjoyment of the game, but once you understand the extent to which this conflict is present, you will keep on thinking about it, leaving the nagging thought in your head that this character that seems so ordinary, is technically committing genocide and walking away from it like nothing has happened.

The Uncharted series has a signature style of gameplay: a combination of 3rd person cover-based shooting, and some light 3rd person platforming, along with a few puzzles sprinkled somewhere in there. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, being the first game in the series, shows us the origins of this formula and its humble beginnings.

First off is the shooting. The mechanics regarding this are fairly simple to understand and are centred around the concept of cover. The player can crouch or stand up against a wall or environmental object to take cover and be shielded from enemies and can attack by poking their head and gun out from behind cover. Enemies also move and act in the same way, using broken walls or upturned tables to shield from fire. This makes Uncharted's gameplay and shooting sections into somewhat of a stop-action sequence, with the player moving from cover to cover in between shooting.

Ammo is fairly abundant in the game and is done to facilitate the action-orientated gameplay which provides the player with a feeling of power. Uncharted isn't a survival horror game like Resident Evil, so ammo doesn't have to be scarce and in low amounts. Instead, ammo can be wholeheartedly smeared across rooms and pathways to provide the player with a constant stream of bullets to fight with.

The downside of providing the player with tons of ammo is that it becomes really obvious as to when an encounter is going to take place. While the classic tell-tale signs of conveniently placed cover are ever-present, if you come across a room with a lot of ammo and guns just lying around, you can be fairly sure that there is going to be a gunfight soon, either in this room or in the next one. This hinders the game's excellent cutscenes and music that try so hard and succeed in attempting to build up to a climax where everything is going to explode in bullets and screams, but instead, the player already knows what's coming. This actually ruined a few good surprises in the game as I already knew what to expect which ruined the tension that the game was building up.

This also makes the shooting feel really fun. While ammo is abundant, excellent shooting mechanics make the guns feel nice to use, and never too floaty like the gun is made out of thin air. It also helps that enemies in the game aren't bullet sponges. This ensures that the player's guns feel lethal enough while still creating enemy AI that makes sure that they remain challenging to face, but not so challenging that players will have to unload clips after clips of bullets to take down a single foe.

At the start of the game, gun variety is extremely low. There are only about 3 types of guns that you will find throughout the early sections of the game. This means that while locations and arenas constantly change, the weapons you use remain mostly the same. This is slightly helped by grenades that you can find and turrets in certain places, but gun variety is still lacking in the early hours of the game.

However, this does improve as the game progresses. By the end of the game, there are only about 5-10 guns that the player can and has used, but this number feels good for the type of game that Uncharted is trying to be. Since there is no progression in the game, apart from progression in the story, the game doesn't need an arsenal of guns for Nathan Drake to carry around since they always reset at the start of most chapters, leaving the player with a sole pistol. Guns are sprinkled around the levels so the player is always switching out weapons, even many times in a single chapter. And because enemies come at you from all ranges, all weapons like shotguns, assault rifles, and snipers have different uses in different situations.

The next major facet of Uncharted's gameplay loop is platforming. This mostly consists of climbing around obstacles that conveniently stand in your way. I feel that the climbing in this game serves its purpose of mixing up the flow of gameplay while not feeling like a tacked-on mechanic. Yet I can't help think about how much more this could have been.

The introduction of the vines was welcome but was sparingly used throughout the game. By having more unique and inventive platforming tools and equipment, the next climb could have actually been something I looked forward to, instead it was something that was just there, a simple "meh" before the next engrossing story moment or explosive firefight.

At times, it can also be hard to tell what you can or can't climb. Since Uncharted is a linear adventure, the developers couldn't just have the player roaming outside of the intended path. Thus, they had to make only select objects and environmental terrain climbable and scalable by the player. Apart from obvious boxes or steps that are meant to be simply walked or vaulted over, the actual walls and rock faces that are meant to be climbable are marked with a simple white highlight, something resembling the lines created by school kid rubbing white coloured chalk on a surface.

This indicates what is climbable and what isn't, but there were times where simple objects that even us normal people outside of a videogame and in real life would have been able to climb, and pieces of the environment that were naturally white and could be easily mistaken by the player for something that is supposed to be climbed over.

Furthermore, at times the climbing can be unresponsive and frustrating. Sometimes Nathan Drake would just not grab hold of the ledge or randomly decide to walk off the edge instead of jumping onto the next one. While this is fair and far apart, when it takes place, it can result in simple platforming sections being a pain to complete.

Some jumps look like they can be easily completed but actually can't be, although the game employs a smart animation of Nathan Drake reaching his hand out to indicate that a jump can be made. However, a clearer distinction regarding what gap can be crossed would have been appreciated, resulting in less time lost and less frustration vented at the game. I'm looking at you, the platforming section in the Monastery Church, what a pain in the ass you were.

The game also has puzzles. These mainly have to do with matching the environment around you to notes and drawings in Sir Francis Drake's diary. They provide a nice slow moment in between the adrenaline pumped combat sequences but fail to make a lasting impression. In addition, these puzzles are very oddly spaced with there being almost none in the first half of the game, and at least three in the latter half. Better spacing would have made them slightly more bearable, but just like the platforming sections, these were just minor obstructions as I made my way through the game's story.

Speaking of oddly spaced stuff, the checkpoints in this game are also poorly managed. In normal gameplay, the game usually autosaves after every room, gunfight, or cutscene, but during the action set-pieces, of which there are basically 2 major ones in the game, the checkpointing is basically not present at all. The first one can be easily completed in a single try, but the second one, which involved driving a jet ski and shooting at the same time, which trust me is a horrible experience due to the ski's horrible handling, there are no checkpoints in its entirety. This means that it will almost certainly take many frustrating attempts to get through this part. A simple checkpoint after each part of the set piece will ensure a more seamless and flowing experience through otherwise exciting sections of gameplay.

I have nothing but praise for this game in terms of its sound design. All characters are superbly voiced, especially the gruff Victor Sullivan. The limited gun variety works well in conjunction with audio and sound because each gun is able to sound different and unique to one another, which also helps compensate for the restricted pool of guns to use. Naughty Dog has also done well with creating the flash-bang effect that comes after a grenade explodes. If a grenade explodes near you during gameplay, the sounds will momentarily change pitch to sound high and loud, also creating a ringing after effect in your ears. This does well to immerse the player into the game world and create an auditory reaction to in-game happenings.

I played this game on PS4 as a part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, which is a collection of remastered ports of the first three Uncharted games. The official website for the collection states that the games will run at 1080p with 60 frames per second. And while I don't have frame tracking software to confirm any of this, I can say that the ran smoothly without any noticeable frame rate drops to the naked eye. If you want a more detailed technical analysis, go check out Digital Foundry and their video on the Nathan Drake Collection, which is sure to go into detail about frame rate, resolution, anti-aliasing and all that mumbo jumbo that I'm too dumb to understand.

From the outside, however, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune looks extremely pretty in its remastered state. Facial animations aren't the greatest, but that is due to the game's age and the technology of its time. The same can be said about close up textures that look rather murky at times. On the contrary, the scenery from afar looks absolutely stunning. Whether it is the cold swept water of a fast-flowing river or the blushing sun rising setting over the horizon, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has some gorgeous vistas that have stood tall and strong against the test of time. Although lighting is an issue at times, with rooms being too dark to really see what's going on and what can be interacted with, this remastered port of the PS3 original holds up incredibly well in today's landscape.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a triumph in adventure storytelling and has been greatly influential in the narratively driven games of today. The story is rather simple but is held tight by a great cast of characters and a relationship that continues to develop. Beautiful vistas and immaculate sound design accompany a robust gameplay loop of shooting, climbing, and puzzle-ing, as the hunt for the treasure of El Dorado continues. By no means perfect due to some rather confusing design choices like tacky platforming and lacklustre villains, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune must be acknowledged and acclaimed, not only for spawning one of PlayStation's most beloved franchises but for being a hell of a solid game in itself.

Score: 4/5

@Th3solution Yeah, unfortunately I think the best version of Ico (the HD Classics remaster) is gonna be stuck on PS3 forever, unless this rumoured push for PlayStation backwards compatibility comes to pass. Despite all my problems with the game, technical performance wasn't one of 'em, so I reckon it'd be worth you dusting off your PS3 if you ever wanted to go back and replay it.

And thank you! Journey is one of those games I've always meant to play, but I've never formally folded it into my backlog for some reason. I'll definitely keep it in mind, though, particularly after this conversation we've been having. Regardless of whether I end up loving or hating it, I still reckon that there's tremendous value in seeing what certain debates are all about (and hey, I can't imagine it being the most expensive game to pick up nowadays, given its age and reputation).

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@Ralizah Wow, what a barnstormer! Did you write that narrative opening yourself, or is it context lifted from the game's manual or something? Whatever the answer, it makes for a hugely effective opening to your review, and therefore a great choice on your part! Are those amazing screenshots your own, too?

As mentioned elsewhere, I admire your perseverance in chasing the game's platinum, particularly after you highlight the degree of luck in the gameplay on harder difficulty levels. It sounds like the kind of experience I'd have no qualms bailing on, unless I became utterly besotted with the game in question and wanted to celebrate it by achieving every challenge it had to offer and experiencing it from every possible angle, as you seem to with regards Shadow of the Colossus (even if, as you say here, the path to the platinum doesn't necessarily offer any fresh perspectives).

Despite my decision to avoid playing this game, I respect its seemingly well-earned status as a classic, and can understand how it became Ueda's most critically successful game, even in its original form. You've done it justice with your subsequent explanation of its development history, which I found really interesting, and your discussion of how the game might be judged by today's standards. I also liked your important point about how technical and budgetary restrictions can breed artistic creativity, and how various remakes and remasters have highlighted the "just because we can, it doesn't necessarily mean that we should" argument in such cases. I've seen some people say that, because The Last Guardian takes place in a relatively complex and dense environment, Ueda would've made Shadow of the Colossus similarly packed if he could, which would appear to ignore the entire point of each game (guiding Trico over obstacles and through tight spaces is the gameplay in The Last Guardian, after all, just as I'm sure the colossi need plenty of elbow room to move about and become worthy obstacles).

Excellent review, a thoroughly enjoyable read, and what feels like a fair assessment of a flawed gem, one you clearly love and yet have still managed to honestly assess. Thanks for sharing!

@DominusPlatypus Wow, quite a thorough piece! It seems like you enjoyed the game in spite of finding the antagonists to be poorly written. IMO, subpar antagonists are a problem that plague the entire PS3 trilogy.

Yeah, the dissonance between Drake's characterization and the manner in which he murders his way through a small nation full of people by the end of any given Uncharted game is a real issue, especially given the focus these titles have on narrative. If you're going to treat your characters and world like important, consistent things, then you can't just brush aside the killing sprees between every cutscene. Although this might be an issue with action storytelling more broadly. There's probably an important conversation to be had about PG-13 (or T-rated) action hero epics and the way their narratives vastly devalue the worth of human life in favor of making their leads look cool and manly.

The issue of ammo placement signaling enemy ambushes is interesting, and crops up in other genres as well. Like, any seasoned JRPG player knows they're probably in for a wild ride if they're offered a save point right before accessing a new area. It's also easy to anticipate upcoming encounters based on level design, because if you're about to enter an area that's wide and designed like an arena, it's probably because you're going to be running around fighting something in it.

I'm guessing the lack of checkpoints during action setpieces is because they intend for the player to complete them in one go, which I understand. ND prides itself on the cinematic pacing of its action, so it makes sense they'd not want players to checkpoint-scum their way through difficult setpieces. Although, on the flipside, this indeed makes annoying setpieces vastly more annoying, and it's kind of on ND to ensure that their action and vehicle handling is polished enough that it doesn't aggravate the player. I can see both sides to this issue.

When I played the first Uncharted, it was via streaming the PS3 version on PS NOW (the Nathan Drake Collection wasn't a thing yet, and I never owned a PS3), so I can only imagine the PS4 remaster looks quite nice in comparison.

Excellent first post! Really happy you decided to share that with the community.

@RogerRoger Well, I knew I'd have to explain the premise of the game, so I decided to engage in a bit of creative writing after referencing the opening cutscene a few times to make sure I was getting my details right. It's basically the opening of SotC, although the only bits I actually fully lifted were the two lines of dialogue I directly. The references to Wander's state of mind were purely my own invention, although I tried to make sure they harmonized with what we knew about the character based on story details and explicit dialogue. That entire section would probably benefit from re-writing, of course, as creative prose is rarely fully decent in one take, but I figured it served its purpose for the review.

I think that's a pretty fair summation of why I kept on with my plat run. It's a game I have a lot of love for historically, and even though I don't think the trophies are worth getting on their own, I wanted to, at least once in my life, do everything in this game. Trophies incentivize and reward that sort of completionist mindset as well. I'd probably have a ton of trophies on Switch if Nintendo actually bothered to offer their own achievement system, although seeing as how some people go so far as to stop playing older games because of a lack of trophy support, it's probably a good thing I'm not fully married to that trophy hunter mindset.

Yeah, both functionally and aesthetically, the barren environment you explore in SotC makes perfect sense. It's not really a space meant for humans, and, gameplay-wise, there's nothing to it outside of finding and killing colossi (whereas it'd just be boring in TLG, since you don't have the whole boss rush element to it). While I do think it could have done with a little more side-content than what it has, the apparent lack of design bloat in Ueda's games is still satisfying. Especially for something like this that doesn't really guide the player through setpieces and instead allows them to play at their own pace.

I recall you mentioning you wouldn't play this game. If you don't mind my asking, is it because of an objection you have to the premise of the game in general, which involves slaying beasts who aren't posing any harm to anyone? Because I'd understand that. I think I've mentioned it here, but one of the reasons I won't play TLOU Part II is because of the excess of dog murder in that game. I just don't need that sort of thing in my life.

Thanks for reading!

@Octane Traveling to the fruit trees is tedious, but easy enough to actually accomplish. The lizards suck, though, even if you know where they're located. I used the in-game tool for locating the lizards (I believe it's one of the things you unlock via the time trials), and it took WAY longer trying to kill a few of them than it would just killing the colossi. The insanely meager boosts they offer, even compared to the fruit, were the cherry on top. Maximum effort for minimum reward.

@Ralizah Still not as bad as the Koroks..!

@Octane Depends. Korok puzzles were quite fun and well-integrated into BotW, and provided a fun side activity (hunting lizards is NOT fun).

But, yes, tracking down alllllllllllllll of the koroks is probably worse than tracking down all of the lizards. Especially considering after the first few hundred there's absolutely no benefit to doing so.

There's a point where a completionist mindset becomes a sort of psycho-behavioral disease.

@Ralizah I'm at 500 Koroks or so at the moment. Please don't call me crazy.

@Ralizah Happy that you enjoyed the review. I'm excited to share more in the future.

Even though the antagonist in Uncharted 2 is definitely better than the first game, I don't think Lazarevic is the best either. I'm only a few hours into Uncharted 3, so I hope that its antagonist isn't as sub-par as the first two.

"If you're going to treat your characters and world like important, consistent things, then you can't just brush aside the killing sprees between every cutscene." Well said. Even though I don't think too much about this while playing, it does seem really odd that NaughtyDog completely ignored this aspect of the game. I guess they believed that the game's story, presentation, and gameplay loop will make players enjoy the game nonetheless. And credit to them, it did.

Regarding the ammo placement, it does seem like their hand was forced because otherwise, players would enter shootouts with next to no ammo in their guns. One way they could've solved this while also encouraging more movement on the battlefield is instead of leaving ammo before a shooting gallery begins, it can instead be laid out across the room/s, forcing players to keep on moving to find ammo in the initial minutes of the encounter.

I understand your point about retaining the cinematic qualities of the set-piece with minimal checkpoints but players are no longer in awe of the cinematic qualities the third or fourth time they attempt to complete a set-piece. I would rather they just have plentiful checkpoints so that players don't get frustrated, especially in the hard to control 'driving a boat while also firing a shotgun' sections. Damn those sucked.

The remaster looks pretty good, especially those vistas. The first time I looked out over the ocean while scaling the side of that castle in one of the first few chapters, and the final scene on the boat are especially memorable.

@DominusPlatypus Sorry, I must've missed your review yesterday! Definitely would've replied, as it's a superb piece, really enjoyable and well-written! It's always great to hear from folks who're discovering modern classics for the first time, and get a fresh, updated perspective on yesterday's success stories. I do agree with you that Drake's Fortune is a flawed game, but I really like its self-contained atmosphere and straightforward intent, and prefer it to its sequel in many ways.

I think the villains are fine for the story we're being told, even if I understand where you're coming from in criticising them; as the start of a series, it's more important to get the protagonist right, as well as their allies. The quadrilogy is gonna be their ongoing adventure, after all, whereas the villains are mostly disposable on a game-by-game basis. Still, when judged as a standalone, I take your point.

Your note about the sudden introduction of supernatural elements is interesting. I'd be fascinated to see what you make of later games in this regard, as there's definitely a constant evolution in how the series handles this common trope of the genre.

And yeah, the platforming is far from perfect. Other games have fallen into the same traps, but still managed to come away with more interesting and engaging traversal. He does slightly improve over the course of the entire series, but Nate never becomes the most precise of climbers, and it takes until Uncharted 4: A Thief's End for him to achieve any kind of diversity in this regard, by adopting additional tools and mechanics that others (most notably Lara Croft) had already been using for years. I don't think anybody ever aced the Monastery interior on their first playthrough, so you're not alone in raging at that section!

Although I do quite like the jetski sections, but then I am a weirdo, so...

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@Ralizah Well, colour me impressed, as I loved your opening prose (and would disagree with regards giving it another pass; I reckon you've nailed it already)! I've seen the cutscene in question, and would've made the same choices to Wander's thoughts and feelings, too. You should keep going and write a novelisation for the entire game someday! I'd read it, for sure!

You and I see trophies in similar terms. And yes, the sense of focus in Ueda's games can be very appealing in this age of sprawling, icon-covered maps. Even when he's given the resources to go bigger, he keeps things simple, and there's an artistic beauty and skill to that kind of approach. It's why I inevitably think of his games whenever considering smaller indie experiences, like I did with Spirit of the North recently, even though the limitations of those games are often budgetary.

Yes, that's right. I know that your actions in Shadow of the Colossus ultimately have consequences, but I just don't wanna play a game that solely tasks you with murdering a bunch of beautiful, innocent creatures. I don't need to actively engage in slaughter to be taught that lesson. Back in the days when PS2 magazines came with free demo discs, I actually took down what I assume was the game's first colossus, and figured that this frighteningly large, dark-looking, yellow-eyed, club-wielding monster had destroyed a village or something, and needed to be dealt with. Thankfully I didn't enjoy the demo enough to purchase the full game and now, a bit older and wiser, I'm okay with leaving it well alone. The Last Guardian is much more my kinda thing, freakin' adore that game, whereas I was largely underwhelmed by Ico.

Be warned, if that's your reason for avoiding The Last of Us, Part 2 then I'd also advise that you steer clear of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Its tutorial made me feel sick.

@RogerRoger You flatter me, but I could definitely re-write it to be significantly better. Then again, I'm never really satisfied with my output. I've just had to learn to live with that. But I'm glad it reads well.

I often feel like video game design bloat is intended to distract from an unsatisfying core gameplay loop. In general, my usually vindicated intuition is that if something or someone is attempting to fragment your focus, it's because they don't want you to think too hard about what you're seeing. Ueda's games are the opposite of this: they want you to focus on the core experience, and everything else is stripped away in the process. It's a brave approach that leans into the excellence of the core design of his games.

In fairness, those innocent creatures often attack the player first. But yeah, the game famously makes you feel rather dubious about killing these creatures in the first place. You can't escape the nagging feeling that you're doing something very, very wrong. This ultimately is truer than the player realizes, as you discover at the end that these colossi are what kept Dormin's full power contained, and you get this really interesting (and very short) sequence where you play as a monstrous Dormin and attack the tribespeople who chase after Wander to try and stop him.

Well, I also just don't think I'd enjoy TLOU Part II, since it seems like an extended exercise in cinematic misery porn, but the dog thing is disturbing enough to make me not second-guess my decision. I've also had the entire plot spoiled for me in the course of exploring the fan fallout over the game, so that helps as well.

Thankfully, I've actually already been spoiled on Wolfenstein TNC, since I watched a friend play the tutorial when he got it on Switch. Pretty much noped out after that dog scene, although I hear the game just flat out isn't as fun as TNO either, so no big loss. Even TNO was a tad borderline for me with all of the horrifying exploitation film stuff that happens in it. Not sure where it happened, but somewhere along the way, I became way more sensitive about the stuff I see in the media I consume.

@DominusPlatypus IMO, the villains only get better as you progress further into the series. I actually really liked UC4's villain.

The games lean much less hard on vehicle sections in the third and fourth games as well, as memory serves. UC3 has some really good set-pieces in general. A lot of people think it's one of the worst entries in the series, but I've always been really fond of it.

@Ralizah Not at all; just calling it like I see it. Reviewing your review, as it were. Give this reply a score out of ten and we'll have a nice bit of review-ception going on!

That's an interesting way of putting it, regarding in-game distractions. I think I immediately agree with you on that point. There are some games which intentionally set out to provide plenty of variation, but they tend to be a little older, back when there were fewer established blueprints to work from. I think this modern trend of scattering cookie-cutter objectives across a sprawling map has become quite comfortable and safe for a lot of developers (from AAA to indie), especially with the increased scrutiny of time to completion and value for money in recent years. Such concerns seem to have a higher importance than trying some risky design innovation nowadays, no matter how subjective they may be.

Oh, that's a slightly different ballgame, then. I'll always defend my in-game protagonist against attack when necessary and, as a Tomb Raider fan, I've killed my fair share of innocent-but-still-vicious-and-therefore-kinda-scary animals. I do feel increasingly awful about doing so, though, and that final twist from Shadow of the Colossus you describe still wouldn't be enough for me to justify playing an entire game's worth of actively hunting down and murdering those beautiful creatures. I think a greater sensitivity to such slaughter is a sign of maturity, as I've definitely tracked the same trend in myself (although a couple of unfortunate first-hand experiences accelerated the process, I still reckon I'd have gotten to the same point eventually). Don't take this the wrong way, but I think the older most folks get, the softer they become.

Despite having zero interest in The Last of Us, I also know the entire plot of both games, and reckon I'm not missing much by avoiding them. I'm glad it's all there for those who enjoy such things, but... nah, it's not for me, ta. And yeah, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a pretty bad game. It's one of the ones I remember to stop myself from pre-ordering nowadays, as I rushed to it at launch and ended up severely disappointed, slightly bored and frequently uncomfortable for my sixty bucks.

@RogerRoger There's definitely something to be said for gameplay variety as well, which is the flip side of the discussion. One of the issues I have with certain well-reviewed games is that they have very little gameplay variety to them. And I guess, technically, the same is true of SotC. On the other hand, SotC does a great job of varying the encounters so that they feel distinct, even though you're technically just engaging in the same activity over and over. If it was much longer, the balance would still break down (and it definitely did when I was grinding for my trophies), but, as it stands, the design is JUST right for a 5 - 8 hour game (on your first playthrough, anyway; my hard mode run speedrun with the unlockable time trial gear equipped scarcely lasted more than two hours!). It can be an issue with longer games, though. It was definitely one of my (many) issues with Bloodborne, for example. The game is 40+ hours of largely plotless gameplay where you wander around abandoned streets and kills baddies and bosses. That was stripped down to its essential elements, but, IMO, a game that long would do well with SOME variety in gameplay. Plotless gameplay where you wander around and kill baddies and bosses works out great in eight hour Castlevania games, however.

I suppose I can't blame them. If some dude with a malicious glint in his eye and a weapon showed up on my doorstep, I'd probably attack him too! There are also a fair number of colossi that don't even really... attack you. They can still hurt you, but that's more a consequence of them freaking out and trying to escape the scary little man trying to kill them.

There is actually one colossus that pretty much everyone feels bad after killing. It's the smallest of the bunch, just scarcely bigger than your character. In that battle, you're unable to damage it until you expose the furred body underneath its rock-hard armor. Once you discover it's afraid of fire, you stomp after it with a lit torch and make it fall from a cliff. The fall from the cliff breaks its armor and reveals its back, which, since it's so small, is one big weak spot. So you have to jump on top of the thing and stab it to death through the back.

This is all pretty uncomfortably brutal on its own, but what really seals the deal is the way the poor thing cowers and swipes out at you when you're using the torch to drive it toward the cliff. Especially in the PS4 release, since the colossi are so expressive and well-animated. They perfectly captured the body language of a terrified animal.

The really interesting thing about the game, which it barely even tries to hide, is that you're playing a villain. His motivations are sympathetic, of course, but that doesn't excuse him slaughtering the colossi and releasing a demon that was clearly a threat to the world.

I don't think I mentioned this, but there's clearly a bond between Wander and his horse as well. It's the only actual emotional bond you have with another living thing in the game, so when you think your horse has died after falling from a cliff, it's a pretty devastating sequence. I wonder if this human/animal connection resonated enough with people that it inspired The Last Guardian to focus on that sort of bond entirely?

I really need to play that game. I have no doubt it'll rip my heart out, but it looks fantastic.

Xbox series X review by MC Noisy

For my biffday Mrs Noisy bought me a flipping Xbox series X. Now not only was that amazing after being a big fan of the original and the 360, but I had no idea. Gobsmacked.

I have been hearing loads about the games. I couldn't wait to try Forza Horizon and Aeroplane simulator. Haven't heard much about the console itself so here's my review.

Boxing 🥊

Stunning boxing in comparison to my PS5 were I ripped the box and bits fell out. Well thought out and looked spiffing. Unboxing was easy apart from the shielded up celotape rings, impenetrable to the human body. I needed some scissors for that. All in all a big W for Xbox.

The Beginning - Beauty is only skin deep

After that I started to log in and up. Get my game on! But Bill Gates slapped me right in the snoz. It was as if I had attempted to book a family holiday in Butlins on the Pontins website. Super long and unnecessary intro to the current Xbox infrastructure. The online intro found my old account via my Hotmail email which was super cool. However I think this has caused more issues than it was worth, possibly causing glitches I will come on to later. Everything took ages and wasn't snappy like the PS5. Loading circles dominated my first 2 hours with the new console. It has major problems here, trying to set a passcode didn't work initially - in fact other than finding my account I don't think anything I deselected for data and selected for preferences worked. It was such a let down. But struggling onward I got it working. Big L for Xbox

The console and controller - Plastic fantastic poor

The console looks great. Lovely infact. Yes it's just a black box with holes in the top but it's visually appealing. Very quiet so far and I can't praise it enough. The controller though is an absolute disgrace. Step back in time and I'm sure the 360 controllers I owned were better. Very plasticky and weak feeling. I've had issues with moving menus and selecting letters, it's not accurate enough. Compared to my DS4s or Dualsense it's a massive drop off. It even uses, now wait for it ...... Batteries??? In 2022!!!! I think MS know most people will buy an elite at some point as the base controller is rubbish. Microsoft deserve props for the console but penny pinching on the controller is absurd.

The End of the Beginning - Subscription addiction

I'm not going to labour on about Xbox as I haven't played it enough. Forza Horizon is boss, a little too cool kid hyper for me, but I can understand it's critical acclaim. It's pure fun with a shed ton of things to do. After playing FH, it's not a system seller for me and I can easily put it down but it is great and worth a go.

I'm signed up to Xbox ultimate for 6 months and have a load of games to get through. The big elephant in the room is Gamepass. It's been hyped to heaven and back, mostly by Pushsquare. It's basically PS Now with day 1 releases for Xbox exclusives. Time will tell how great this service will be, I personally will get my fill this year before prices head north. As a newbie it's great, I can find a lot of games I actually want to play (around 20 of them) so it's amazing value for now. That may not be the same case for the MS faithful who've already played Gears 5 and Ori.

@themcnoisy Interesting review. Sorry to hear you didn't like the controller. I actually just bought a Series controller recently for my PC and have been rather impressed with it, aside from the insanely loud D-Pad clicking and the bizarrely concave analog sticks. I actually don't mind the batteries, since it gives me more control over how long I can play, and makes the controller itself more future-proof. And if it's anything like the 360 controller, it'll last a long time on a set of batteries. Although, for someone like yourself, investing in rechargeable batteries might be a better idea.

For context, I consider the OG Xbox's Duke to be the worst first-party controller ever released, and I dislike the 360 controller enough that I haven't played mine in years, despite there being a number of games I'd like to play.

@themcnoisy Great review! I'm surprised that you haven't tried out Quick Resume yet since it's one of the more unique features on the Series X. Being able to have multiple games open at the same time genuinely sounds very appealing and I've seen a lot of people speak fondly of this feature.

In terms of batteries, I have to agree with @Ralizah that it's better to have the choice of using either regular batteries or rechargeable ones rather than force you with rechargeable ones like we see on the PlayStation side. I've been able to enjoy so many games on my 360 and One without having to frequently charge the controller because the batteries last for so long, while right now I'm playing Mass Effect Andromeda on PS4 and I have to constantly charge my DualShock 4.

Game Pass is great and I'm glad that you're enjoying the service. One thing I highly recommend you trying out (as long as you have fast internet and a wired connection) is Xbox Cloud Gaming. I know a lot of people prefer to download their games, but I find Cloud Gaming along with Game Pass to be a great combination since it becomes so easy to sample games without having to wait for them to be downloaded. Not to mention that you don't have to worry about constant updates/patches if you're playing through the cloud. It's the closest thing you're going to get to an old school experience of being able to get a game and play it instantly on your system. Just like the good old days without installs/downloads and patches. And there's no latency at all as long as you have a good internet connection. I was able to finish both Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite through Cloud Gaming. The only issue is that the image will refresh sometimes, particularly during cut-scenes, but other than that it works surprisingly really good.

I also recommend following some channels, like @ Xbox on Twitter or Push Square's sister site Pure Xbox in order to find out when and what new games are being added to Game Pass. I personally look forward to these updates all the time because it's always exciting to see what new games are being added.