So just finished up a lengthy play of Watchdogs 2 and was thoroughly impressed.

I know I am in a minority here, but I rather enjoyed the original Watchdogs. While it may not have been the game that we thought it would be, it was all in all a great game that was very under rated.

WD2 on the other hand is a complete 180 to the original. With a fun cast and a brilliant protagonist. Marcus is charismatic, a sharp dresser, and just an all around fun character to play.

The game opens on you trying to prove your worth to Dedsec by pulling off a major hack, thus granting you access to the club.

Things progress from there into a place that is all to familiar in the eyes of the world.

With you gaining followers on social media to boost your status in the hacking world. Taking on the big evil corporations of Nudle (google) and Blume, as well as a political candidate that is pretty close to Trump.

It all feels very real world in a way.

The core game play is quite similar to GTA in a lot of ways, from car jacking to shoot outs and police chases.

Where WD2 differs though is the ability to hack anything and everything, from changing street lights to cause crashes, hacking cars to make them have accidents, or taking out a chopper chasing while you flee the police.

All of these things set it apart from a boring old sandbox gangster game.

Another very strong point is characters, you routinely get calls from your crew and just chit chat, and the banter is so well done. From talk of childhood to radial commentary on silicone valley, it is all very organic and real. They did an amazing job casting this game.

The multiplayer is also top notch ere, it is a persistent multiplayer world that is akin to Dark Souls, where you are not all in one place at once time, but other players can be in your game, helping or reeking havoc.

The only gripe I have is that by the end of the game, it gets very “Michael Bay” in terms of story, with a game that was so plausible and rooted in reality, it is a bit disappointing to see how far off the deep end they go with the action and end game scenarios.

It does not mar the game in any big way, but in my eyes it was too much out of the realm of beleiveability.

Play-through took about 25 hours to hit a Platinum trophy and was enjoyable start to finish. Not a hard Plat, and by no means indicative of a 100% game.

There is tons you can still do post game if you are so inclined, from street races, to uber driver, vandalizing the town, and endless online missions as well. You could easily milk 100 hours out of WD2 to see and do it all.

A solid 9/10 and a great open world game.

I will get this out of the way early. If you are in any way, shape of form a Final Fantasy fan, you need to go buy World of Final Fantasy. Plain and simple.

The nostalgia here is so thick you can cut it with a buster sword.

World of Final Fantasy follows the typical FF formula. Start off by confusing the audience, drop your Hero and Heroin into a unfamiliar world, and let things slowly boil to the surface.

But what sets it apart from the 14 core games before it is, it takes all you favorite heroes and monsters from previous franchises and adds them in to this mysterious world of Grimoire.

There is no explanation, no preamble, just that they somehow exist all together on this strung together floating island world. They are all friends to an extend.

Tifa lives in Neiblheim, a city assembled by Shinra after a disaster along side Squall who works for Seed with Rydia and Shelke.

Vivi and Edgar forge a friendship and work to save their kingdom.

Tidas, Squall, Bartz and the original Warrior of Light will all work together to help you save Grimoire from the dark forces threatening it.

None of it makes any sense, but all of it feels so good.

You get the point, this is a walk down memory lane, all while being completely fresh and new.

At the core of WoFF is a robust RPG system, with a simple yet very complex fighting system.

The whole system revolves around stacking a pile of monsters you capture and using them to fight, so take a baby Shiva and “teen” Ifrit, pile them on top of you, and you now have a fire and ice based combo mage.

Or take a baby Ifrit and a teen Ifrit to morph all your spells from there vanilla form to a Firaga or Firaja

Stand on top of an Iron Giant and a Rock monster and you have a heavy hitting melee class.

It is difficult to explain, but it works very well, in practice easy to get into, but hard to master.

Leveling up is done through the creatures themselves. Sure you have a base level for the 2 main characters, but all your bonuses and skills come from spending AP points gained through combat on your specific monsters.

The story itself is pretty cohesive for Final Fantasy all things considered. It has the standard build up to the false ending which so many JRPGs have in common. This is in no way a slam, and actually is pretty well executed. It will keep you guessing as to what is happening and is all very well wrapped up in the end.

The world as a whole is fairly substantial, and you will visit a lot of familiar location from the FF world.

I will not go into detail as I do not want to ruin the surprise, but there are moments here that brought me back to my 20’s playing FF7, and made me seriously long for that FF7 remake we have been promised.

Also, this happened:

If that does not make you run out and grab WoFF, then nothing I have told you will.

The tale lasts about 40 hours for a straight play-through and all the “tea room” side stories. You could easily milk another 20-30 hours out trying to find all the 165 monsters available and finishing all the side quests.

There is also a clear picture by conversations in the game, that this will not be the last game in the World of series, with talk of other worlds and universes, I can see that if WoFF succeeds, we can expect a World of Dragon Quest, or a World of Kingdom Hearts in the future. Which in my opinion would be very welcomed.

All in all a fantastic lighthearted adventure that was enjoyable every moment, not once did I get that familiar “ugh, I just want to be done” feeling that so many RPGs seem to give me.

A solid 9/10 and a must buy for FF fans.

So I dove back into PSVR this week with the release of RE7 and the Star Wars Battlefront VR mission, and while in VR mode, decided to power through a few games I had sitting here as well.

So I dove into Bound with reasonably high expectations, based on all the reviews and the strong voice on the PSVR sub-reddit.

I know I am going to be in the minority here, but I have to say I was terribly disappointed. Sure it looks and feels nice in VR, but as a whole, the game made little to no sense at all in terms of cohesive story.

So many reviews (and the reddit community) tout it as something spectacular, but I just found it boring after the first 10 mins.

Maybe I am just no longer built for Indie games, but I like a decent story that makes some semblance of sense, and less and less indie games are offing that it seems.

It is as if the community is going to the starving artist. Whereby someone smears red and blue pain on a canvas and touts it as the modernization of society and its struggles with the middle class.

When all I see is a messy kindergarten level drawing.

Maybe I missed the point, but Bound really was not for me.

From the messy camera, which only “jumps” to an angle and distance each time you push in a direction. To the completely incoherent story.

** Spoiler Alert **

I am going to delve into the ridiculous story here for a min.

You start on the beach as a pregnant woman, who appears to be going through a journal of traumatic childhood memories. Why? No one know, nor does the “artist” care to explain.

Each memory plays out in some abstract world whereby you dance to fight off the source of the misery, from moms broken pearls, to your brothers paper airplanes. I know ridiculous right?

There is a loud monster that seems to have no bearing on anything, just yells.

You paint back memories of you parents fighting, mom scolding you brother, brother getting scalded by hot water.

All in an attempt to…. WE HAVE NO CLUE!

Is this women somehow mentally damaged by the fact her brother 30 years ago got yelled at? Seriously?

Is she having second thoughts on having this baby with the knoledge that her dad left?

Why did he leave? Or more important, why should I care?

This is Bound in a nutshell.

It is a mess, the plot makes zero sense, as we lack all motivation for the main character.

Why do memory play out as a cyber ballerina? Was she a dancer? No one knows, and no one cared to explain.

Save yourself $10 and bypass this highly over rated dud.

A generous 2/10, simply as high as it is due to the fact the game did really look nice in VR. Beyond that, it is simply not worth it…