Recent reviews by Nathaniel Higgers

If people calling this game a "soulslike" is making you hesitant, fear not.
Black Myth: Wukong is a phenomenal action game that holds nothing in common with a typical "souls" experience apart from action game elements that happen to be prevalent in Fromsoftwares games.
Imagine if God of War and Nioh 2 had a baby, that's Black Myth Wukong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuicF2uu1k

Would you pay $30 to experience the brilliant writing present in the Crimson Fleet, United Colonies, Freestar Rangers or Ryujin faction quest lines? If not then there is no point in even looking at Shattered Space.
This DLC is a faction quest line that comes with the same (and even worse) writing present throughout Starfield. It adds nothing to the game at large, nor does it showcase Bethesda listening to anyone or addressing the extreme flaws of Starfield.

Genuinely a horrible piece of content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvWyP91wD0

Nioh is a phenomenal action game that fuses Japanese history and folklore into one beautiful package that comes with a combat system beyond anything From Software has made to date. Yes even Sekiro. If the "soulslike" tag attached to this game scares you, fear not. The game is about as much of a soulslike as Cuphead is. Aside from a few similar tropes, that existed even before Dark Souls, the game has nothing in common.


https://youtu.be/JL9GANytDuA

Anger Foot is a phenomenal first-person (footer?) shooter adaptation of the Hotline Miami 'trial & error' formula.
The game boils down to going through dozens of obstacle courses that all share one singular goal, get from point A to Point B. But this simple goal is fine-tuned to peak crisp levels with fantastic audio, a unique and endearing artystyle & the interesting gimmick of kicking.
Shockingly enough, that kicking gimmick remains fun and fresh up to the end-credits, thanks to earnable shoes that augment your kicks.
Sadly a lot of the shoes are completely irrelevant outside of challenges.
More on that here: https://youtu.be/rx0J80I_llA

There seems to be an issue with balancing at current.
I'm at 60 vigor with dragoncrest tali getting 2 shot on a consistent basis.
The "new leveling system" supposedly should address this for those that desire, yet no amount of leveling it made me feel any difference. This makes every encounter fell like a frustrating filterfest til you internalize practically every attack and its timings.
To me that's fine. I love getting to know bosses to the point where each encounter is a rhytmic dance where I have an action in mind for each of their strings. But I can totally see this being a massive deal-breaker to someone looking to have fun or experience more "Elden Ring"

The locations, lore, new weapons, new armors, new ashes, new spells, new etc etc etc are all phenomenal additions that will make base-game Elden Ring feel exciting again. The amount of build potential is off the charts based on what I've found alone, and there's still much more.

There will probably be a patch to address the "challenge" at some point, when that happens the DLC will be 10/10. But til then, only a masochist such as myself can take joy out of this.

Nightmare Kart is exactly the Bloodborne Miyazaki would create if he was not limited to the ancient tech of the Playstation 4.
At this rate we don't even need Bloodborne on PC because it will never shine a candle to this game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_etC7TSX3Uc

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Don't let the cute appearance fool you. This game is a fantastic soulslike that incorporates many great elements from phenomenal games like Lies of P, Sekiro, Dark Souls, etc. It is easily the best addition to the genre since Lies of P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAkOWdnNtH0

Pluh

My stance is neutral, the game is anchored heavily in the 5/10 spot. However Steams review system is too binary, and I can't in good heart sign this game positively when it drops the ball so hard in the gameplay department.

If you like story driven games that have a bunch of cutscenes and even more dialogs, then Steelrising might hit the spot.
If you're looking for a soulslike with decent enemy variety, a sense of progression and instances of challenging encounters then you should look elsewhere.
https://youtu.be/T8nXQxXIfOM