I originally bought the Bioshock collection solely for the first game. It was just the most convenient way for me to play it at the time. I was honestly just not interested in either Bioshock 2 or Infinite from what I've seen from them. So I played 1, enjoyed it enough, then moved on. Only recently have I heard talks that Bioshock 2, while flawed in its own right, has been criminally overhated. After taking a small look of some more footage online, I decided to give it a shot. And what do you know, I ended up liking it more then the first game.
It just feels nicer to play across the board. The simplification of the tedious hacking minigame from the first, dual wielding plasmids and guns at the same time so you can shock foes while you're reloading, you tend to get special ammunition and plasmids at a much brisker pace, and no location feels like it overstays its welcome. Was worried about having to defend the Little Sisters in this game, but honestly they were never an issue. Bioshock 2, like the first one, provides a lot of traps that help even out the swarms of crazed splicers out for you daughter. Not to mention, I feel Bioshock combat shines when you're pre-planning for either a Big Daddy encounter or one of the previously mentioned daughter defending missions. Really satisfying when you're patiently hacking security bots and laying tornado or spike traps, and then absolutely thrashing the opposition as they ragdoll into the air as your turrets shoot them midair.
The story was better then I was led to believe. I am in the mind that 1 has the stronger narrative, but if I'm honest I felt more attached to the characters of 2. Especially when factoring Minerva's Den, a very solid 2-3 hour DLC with a strong emotional ending.
I think what speaks volumes about my experience was that I had this game crash while saving... and it erased my data. Thankfully there was an autosave, but it only saves at the beginning of the level. As I found out later, I was right at the end of that level before losing my file. It did demoralize the hell out of me, but replaying the whole level wasn't really exhausting at all. In fact I built my character in a slightly different way, so it wasn't like I repeated everything I did exactly.
I'm not sure if this is one of my favorite FPSs, I need to think on it more, but I'm really glad to have given it a shot.



(...Sorry, but Infinite is not happening. It literally got rid of everything I liked about the first two. I definitely wouldn't enjoy my time with it)

I wanted to see what hard mode was like, bearing in mind that this is my first playthrough of this game. I went up to a goblin and got one-hit killed. I thought to myself "Oh no..." Then I manage to kill a few goblins and one of them dropped 10,000 gold pieces. I then thought to myself "OH NO...!" Since that meant I would not revert to normal mode ever. I continue to bash my head against this wall for 60 hours, all the while a perfectly functioning door is right next to me, but damnit there's double experience points on hard mode and I'm not missing that.
I then continue to play this game "wrong" by going the Bitterblack Isle, the DLC area added with "Dark Arisen", as soon as I was able to, and slowly but surely began chipping away at it. A weakness I have in games is that, if there's a high level area in a game I shouldn't go to yet, but I could go there, then I will. I like seeing what I can get away with, finding loot and items way before I should normally have them, or maybe gain, like, ten levels from killing a high level enemy. This got to the point that I manage to clear the DLC when I was not even halfway through the main game.
I liked the action gameplay overall, throwing goblins off a cliff was never not amusing. Climbing large monsters to precisely target weak points is really ambitious and cool; but the camera going ballistic for the more extravagant monsters, and the fact that I've had many times where I had no clue what direction to move the analog stick to move where I wanted to, while on the wildly flailing chimera with a snake tail, made it more of a pain then I wanted. Speaking of chimeras, it was really cool and fun when I saved in the middle of the forest, not realizing there was a chimera right next to me. I then suffered close to twenty deaths as this beast would just one hit kill me with the slightest touch, plus it was my first time fighting one and I kept either trying to run or pray I had enough strength charms to out damage it, plus it was nighttime and sometimes I couldn't even see the godforsaken thing. After many failed attempts I finally slayed it... then three minutes later I got caught by a second chimera. The whole time I thought "God I wish there was a fast travel option", not knowing that I was one main quest away from that feature.
And then there's the vocation system. Any game with a class/job system is an immediate hook. I always love mixing and matching party compositions, doubly so if its one of those games that allows you to carry over abilities and skills to your other jobs, like this one (what a coincidence!). It is strange though that your pawns, which to put it extremely basically are your party members, only have access to 6 out of 9 vocations, which I honestly don't get. I don't see a reason to limit them. Regardless I found the vocations to be decently varied, even if I feel this game really favors vocations with range capabilities. I mean, Warrior hits like a dump truck but it wasn't fun trying to reach certain bosses and enemies that took their sweet time in the air. I stuck to Assassin personally, highest strength growth plus a bow. Fit my play style well.
Lastly I wanted give kudos to having a character creator that actually allows you to adjust your weight and height to a pretty significant degree. I know the argument for why this doesn't happen more often in games is the worry of it adjusting your hurtbox, but at least the tradeoff in this game is that the heavier character can carry more in their inventory. It's just something you see so rarely even today (in a action game that is).

That's all well and good, but here's the thing: By the end of my playthrough the thing I thought about the most was "Man, Dragon's Dogma II could be absolutely incredible". And I was thinking about that a lot since... going to be honest I had plenty of instances where I thought to myself "I want to be done with this". I'm not one to stop playing a game till I finished it, but there were a lot of moments of boredom and annoyances. It didn't get "frustrating", but things piled up.
Firstly, I didn't like exploring the huge open world. Well, it isn't quite an "open world", but it certainly is big. It got irritating having to manage my stamina when I'm traveling to my destination, since the usage and recovery of it is dependent on how much you carry in your inventory. I honestly don't care for this, at best a penalty should only apply when over-encumbered. And even with a light inventory, I found that stamina recovery was way too slow for my liking. What they could do for the sequel is what they did with Monster Hunter: World and Elden Ring, where you have infinite stamina unless you're in combat. Doesn't help that your regular walking speed is painfully sluggish as you wait for your stamina to recover. Regardless, anytime I had to travel a great distance, it always took way longer then it needed.
I know its a 7th gen game, but the environments and humans look really rough. Another factor to why exploring was really boring to me is that I wasn't that impressed by what I was looking at, even when I tried to have a lower standard for playing a ten year old game. Though the big monsters still looked really good admittedly.
But even then, some fights weren't that fun. Mostly relegated to the higher level monsters found in the DLC and the end game. How about goblins that will knock you onto the ground and stomped you to death, as they're also stomping your other party members to death and thus can't save you. Or monsters with ridiculous levels of defense that take forever to kill. Or any monster that inflicts petrification since your party members aren't that great at avoiding those attacks and can't be revived if they turn to stone and crumble. Or giant wolves that keep running outside the camera, and there's no lock on so you're constantly adjusting the camera with your right thumb (which is annoying, but really only bad under pretty specific circumstances). Or any enemy with a grab that forces you to spin the left stick like crazy, bearing in mind that I'm on the Switch and rather not want to buy another joy-con. There's a lot more, but this is more then enough.
Some of these grievances are probably because I played it on hard mode... including the stamina usage with sprinting now that I think about it, but then that means hard mode wasn't balanced well. Hard mode has the unfortunate thing where the beginning is more difficult then the end game, for the most part. Again, goblins were one hit killing me, but they were far from the only enemies. But by the end game I could actually take, like, five or more hits before dying and had more then enough revives and healing potions. Because of this poor balancing, I'm pretty sure half my deaths were from one-hit kills; and it starts to really wear on you when your chipping away at this mob of enemies but then "oh look a arrow flew from off screen and now I'm dead". Yes, I was too stubborn to turn the difficulty down, but I knew if I stuck with it then I wouldn't need to grind as much later in the game with how much money I've accumulated.
Then the story, it wasn't doing anything for me... at first. Sadly I was most engaged only when I reached the end game. I know it's a ten year old game, but I'd rather not spoil why. Despite that, the lore and setting just were not capturing my attention and I really didn't care for the characters, which is usually a death sentence, personally. I'm someone who can tolerate a bad story if I love the characters and their interactions with one another, regardless if what they're actually doing is confusing or boring. The Dark Arisen DLC was at least a little more interesting, but I don't know, I was tempted to skip the dialogue and cutscenes at many points. Glad I didn't by the end, but it was yet another thing that drained me of this game.

I was not expecting this game to be one of my longer reviews, but that's what happens when a game has a lot of stuff I really love and has equally as much stuff that I'd rather not deal with. I didn't even get to how much going into the inventory to use items really hampered the combat flow so much for me, but now this is starting to get too bloated for my liking. A thing I tried my best to do was to not compare this game to other games, especially to games created after it. It's not fair to it at all, even if I honestly feel many of its best features have been done better by so many other games. Not all of it mind you, and Dragon's Dogma still has quite a vibrant identity to this day, despite the drab environments... ok, that last one was uncalled for.
This is why I'm excited for Dragon's Dogma II. A first game in any franchise is going to have some hard-to-ignore blemishes, and I can see a game here that would be one of my all-time favorites. It has so much for me, now here's hoping the next one can deliver something immaculate

Was thinking of game genres that I like and dislike, and I thought to myself "I don't think I'd like point-and-click games, but I never played one before, so..." Then suddenly an ancient memory from my childhood unlocked. It was in preschool, I remembered playing some kind of game that involved cartoon fishes looking solemnly at a red sea creature in a cage with sad eyes. I never could play it for long, there was only one computer for everyone in the class. We took turns, but instead of starting the game over when it was someone else's turn, you'd just pickup from where the last person left off. As a result, I had no clue what this game was even called. Only years and years later was I watching a retrospective on Humongus Entertainment, and one look at that yellow fish sent me back to my childhood.

Am I ever going to play these games again? Nah, not really. These kinds of games aren't for me nowadays. Nevertheless, if I ever had kids these could be great introductory games, even nowadays.
One things for certain, these games are timeless.

Happy New Year to all.

What, this game? Yeah this is just a game I recently found on my shelf and thought "oh wait, I forgot to log this one" and now here we are. I didn't watch the movie and I only read the first book after finding out there were, like, twelve more books afterwards so I didn't pursue the series any further. The game itself wasn't that great, not that's any surprise really. It involves collecting items to create inventions to move on to the next point of the game, and it takes about three hours but somehow felt way too long. If you played any licensed game made in the mid-2000s before then you know what to expect. I wouldn't say it's bad in a interesting way, more aggressively boring and not worth a look, unless of course you love to experience budgeted gaming. That ain't an insult, some people genuinely love playing the games made on a shoe string budget under a tight deadline back in the days when you could conceivably make a 3D game that portrays real people with a small-to-medium sized team. Not my thing; but hey, you can probably emulate this easily if you're that curious. Perhaps this is a series you're particularly nostalgic for even, not like it's getting any recognition nowadays (wait, there was a Netflix series back in 2017 with three seasons? Well... crap)


... Going to vent a bit, if you are not interested in that then stop reading and drink some hot chocolate or something. Treat yourself, these are hard times for many.

This year was tough in a lot of ways. Felt as if I made too little progress in what I needed to do. Mental roadblocks I thought I had a good handle on came back worse then ever. Literal days would slip by, time ticking too fast for me to keep up. And it didn't really hit how much time passed till I looked back on how much I lost this year. Even games I love weren't giving me the same comfy escapism that they always gave me. Real life kept dragging me away, sometimes for the better, mostly for the worse. I kept making promises to myself to do "this", and "that" for my own sake, but backed out at the last second as the irrational fears injected anxiety into my brain. They keep pulling me away from taking the steps I needed, and everytime it frustrates me when looking in hindsight. I've been doing it less, but often I would not treat myself well for failures like these. Not in the extreme ways mind you, more associating my failures as a characteristic of me as a human being. The unfortunate events of this year shows how ill-prepapred I still am in this part of my life. And now what I thought were steps to get on the right track are not bearing the fruit I was hoping for. I'm in a maze and it feels like I keep guessing wrong, and everytime I have to retrace my steps I get slower and slower.
It feels like I'm suffocating.

I know I'm being intentionally vague, not comfortable getting any more specific then what I've already said. Especially since this is frankly an inappropriate place to vent like this. It's hard for me to look forward to much in the upcoming year, I'm worried of being overly enthusiastic about what'll happen and be let down by myself and other cruel jokes by some obscure god that I must've pissed off unintentionally (cause how eles do you explain everything else that went wrong?)

And yet despite all that, Happy New Year. Have a fuckin wonderful time. May your joys be many, and your sorrows be few and manageable. As for me, I'm going to try again. And if I fail again, then I'll probably make myself a hot cocoa and do something else. 2022 really was A Series of Unfortunate Events, but at least every story has an ending one way or another.
Now time to move on...

Did you know the same director of the original Ghost 'n Goblins returned to direct this game? Did you also know he founded Whoopee Camp, the same company responsible for the Tomba duology? Crazy, right?

Absolutely brutal, but it does its best not to be discouraging. The easier difficulties don't berate you for picking them, and the occasional boss hints will inform you on how close you were to beating them with some nice blurbs added like "I know you can succeed". Doesn't change the fact that this game will nail your feet to the floor and ask you to run a marathon before your bomb collar blows up. The higher the difficulty, the less hits you can take and the highest one removes these extra checkpoints; so as the game puts it "pick your poison".
A huge factor to this games difficulty, and partially its enjoyment, is the use of RNG. Enemies will not always spawn the same way everytime, thus every run is different enough that you have to be on your toes at all times. And this game absolutely swarms you with enemies; but for the most part they will be in a non-harmful state when they initially spawn thus you have a brief moment to adjust to the new obstacle. And it's not like every section is completely random, but you have to be prepared for some on-the-fly decision making.
Another neat feature is that exiting out of a level will allow you to enter it later from your last checkpoint, that way you can take a break if the going gets too tough. You also keep any Umbral Bees, which are used for the... skill tree. The skill tree contains spells ranging from creating a doppelganger to copy your movements, drastically speeding you up, turning all enemies into frogs or stone, turning into a boulder that kills on contact and provides defense, and finding hidden treasure chests. It also provides the ability to store an extra weapon or two, which is a godsend, or a random chance to immediately return to life which I'm honestly pretty iffy about. In fact, I've seen people being iffy about the skill tree in general. I could be mistaken, but these might be people expecting a strictly arcade experience only. Which is fair, but from what I've seen these upgrades are never mandatory. If anything, you can treat them as an additional difficulty setting. You can disable each individual ability, so perhaps you don't want any spells but still want to carry more then one weapon. I personally made very liberal use of this skill tree, but I'm well aware that people have, frankly, gotten sick of this trend.
I wouldn't say this game is 100% fair either. While I personally think games don't always need to perfectly fair on a first playthrough if it means the replay is way more thrilling, if your game is as hard as this one then the "Think fast" moments can really deflate your motivation to try again. Respawning is at least quick and there isn't a live system, in addition to not needing to recollect any umbral bees, so it at least isn't the worst it could be.
Aside from the bosses being a mixed bag, this is otherwise a solid recommendation for those who enjoy pain.

Man I remember when I still had friends to play with. Hahahhahahaaaaaauuui@@s##$$!$$<>!*^(^#%<[!]_<>*<*>XDXl::(;(:(;()...

(Finding random strangers online that suggest certain player-made levels that you play together with is an experience I wish to see more often. It's much different when you're already playing together, rather then seeing a comment online about this wild level that's way more ambitious then even the developer's levels. Sequel is way better (3 is uhhhh...) but I honestly just want to see a brand new next-gen Little Big Planet game.)

Those chop goblin bastards will pay...

$5 for an hour long FPS (or much shorter if you aren't bad like me) is a big selling point. Fun FPS with a humorous premise executed as well as it could be. Weird that there's no jump command, but I suppose that's to keep things as simple as possible. Also kudos to the flintlock pistol, wasn't expecting the starting gun to be incredibly satisfying with how explosive every shot is, but the long reload makes it so you need to aim each shot carefully. Other weapons are solid too, maybe the shotgun feels slightly underpowered but it's still very useful.

Not much else to say, if you need some time to kill then gibbing cheese-loving goblins ain't the worst way to spend a hour on. And if you're interested, there is a leaderboard for high scores, so have fun beating the dev at his own game if you can.

Oh golly gee wilikers. Where to even begin? (INCOHERENT RAMBLING WARNING)

Well, you see my rating so let me make this clear: Yes, it runs badly. Yes, it ain't that great looking. Yes, the shadows appear and dissappear whenever they feel like it. Yes, the camera during battles clips into the ground all the time. Yes, other games on the Switch look and run way better.
Here's the thing: I don't care.

OK to be more specific, I stopped caring. Because I was having fun with the game. Does that mean I have low standards? Maybe, though it might just be because... it's Pokemon.
It's a series that I've poured thousands of hours across nearly a dozen games. For context, I started with second gen and played until seventh. Why did I skip Galar? Well, I got a job. ("Yes Pokemon is only for unemployed people") I could finally buy and play so many games that I never could before. This included a lot of other RPGs, namely Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei. I kept saying to myself "I'll get to eighth Gen soon", but I never did. I honestly couldn't put my finger on why. I certainly didn't have as many initial grievances as other people before release, including the infamous national dex controversy. "I wouldn't want to play a new Pokémon game without using the new Pokémon anyway, I don't need all the old ones back", at least that was what my thought process at the time. Yet I kept pushing it off as I kept playing more and more games, greatly expanding my taste in this medium. And Pokemon just didn't seem to be... interesting anymore. I actually tried replaying an older game (my mind is blanking on which) but I couldn't make it too far without wanting to move on from it.

To move on from Pokemon even...

Then Legend Arceus comes out am I like "Welcome back childhood!" That game brought me back to that cozy feeling of raising monsters of utter carnage while adding some fun traversal mechanics. Like Scarlet, it had a lot of faults, and these faults I eventually just got over. If you wanted to be blunt, "ignore" might be a better way of putting it.
Not long after I got done with completing Legends, I replayed one of my all time favorite games: Fallout: New Vegas. Nothing quite like calling a technical disaster with subpar combat mechanics and slow as snails traversal one of my favorites. I'd say that game has way more faults then any Pokemon game, but we aren't robots. Our enjoyment shouldn't be categorize by ""objective scoring"", I gave New Vegas a 5 star ranking and I'm not changing my mind. Yeah it is not fair comparing Pokemon and Fallout at all, especially when one of them is hardly a month old at the time writing. Point being is that how a game makes me feel is the single most important thing for a game, and if I feel like I'm having fun with a a open world game with monsters that pop in ten feet in front of you, then I'll simply accept that my player character is near sighted or something. Technical issues in games can affect my enjoyment for the record. I tolerate it in a turn based game, but action games is way more difficult for me to look past if it requires quick reaction times or simply looks very ugly.

Now to actually talk about the freaking thing: open world ain't very elegant but I always love it when a game allows me to tackle areas at a much lower level. I love seeing what I can get away with, sneaking by Pokemon that'd annihilate my party as I scavenge for high level items. The new Pokemon are some of the best in series, especially the end game ones. Loved that idea.
I actually care about the characters. It ain't no masterful RPG epic, but going from a kid who literally skipped all the text in every Pokemon game cause "reading is boring" to actually paying attention because it engrossed me is still bizzare to this day. Personally found it more interesting then Sun and Moon, as I know a lot of fans like that ones plot. The game just keeps giving you rewards at every turn, kept me hooked to keep exploring, if at the cost of the games challenge. That last part might be because I used so many highly offensive Pokemon to eradicate every HP bar I see, but I hardly struggled at any point. As I've seen, end game content ain't too great, which is generally where my playtime goes to triple itself. But you know, being content with a Pokemon game is probably better for me then sticking to one game for months. No shame if you have a game like that, by the way.

I guess the only other thing I can add is: don't buy this game if your hesitant on it. I didn't buy it day one and I heard all about its issues from other people, yet I also kept hearing things that made me go "That's really cool what they're doing" and as you can tell, that interest won out over the hesitancy. I'd be lying if I said I bought this with zero caution, but if your really unsure then don't bother unless you can afford to be disappointed spending $60 (or $120 for both... ugh that is one practice I will NOT defend).

As for me, thank you Pokémon. I don't know where I'd be without out you. (Not the Pokemon Company, you guys need to stop with this game scheduling hell.)

Honestly there's a lot to say about this game, but I personally don't feel qualified for all the nitty gritty details, mainly since I've only played Bayo 2 a few months ago for the first time and haven't touched Bayo 1 yet. This feels like game for longtime Bayo fans, though it can disappoint them with how troubled this game is in general. Lot of plot points not amounting to a lot, lopsided focus on the less interesting parts of the story, and critical moments that didn't feel earned. But I feel because I'm not a long time fan of the franchise, these were things I could just brush aside. I've already seen hard-core Bayo fans being pretty split on this one, but to answer why exactly is not something I can do.
So I did like Bayo 2, how was 3? I think, at this moment, I like it as much as 2. Both have their highs and lows, with I think Bayo 3 having higher highs and lower lows. (EDIT: After playing 3 on and off over several more weeks, I'm thinking I like 3 more then 2, but would probably recommend 2 first to a newcomer since 3 feels like your expected to have played the other games beforehand) To get the lows outta the way, as someone who scours every inch of an area in a game for secrets, many places are too big. I feel, not just this game, but a lot of games can get exhausting to hunt for items if there's a lot to find in a huge place. I love exploration, but not when it starts to feel I'm going through the motions or worse, a chore. I feel Bayo 2 had a better balance of size and secrets for a fast paced action game.
While there wasn't any bad minigames, there is still a ton of them. A lot of them are insane in looks and in concept, plus are rarely frustrating, but I'd prefer to see them less often, mostly since I did not buy this game for this spectacle (that's what Asura's Wrath is for), I played it for the combat.
Framerate aside, I think this part of the game is much better then Bayo 2. Umbran Climax was fun to use but didn't require a lot of thought. Demon Slaves offer a lot of customization and options in battle, but your magic meter, standing in place during summoning, and the chance of your demon going into rage mode makes it a tool that you really need to think on how to use it. Won't deny that it can feel like a crutch at points, but I'm unsure how that holds up on the higher difficulties at this point. Plus it adds a lot of player expression since there's a loooooot of demons in this game to choose from, every one of which being huge and very creative. Demon Slaves are honestly the perfect addition to add to the insane spectacle during combat since it really feels like the carnage your causing is from your own doing and not from some scripted event. That's really why I'm just kind of "whatever" about scripted events in these games. Yes, you can't control literal Godzilla during normal combat, but to me manually summoning a giant spider to self-destruct itself and kill everything around it just always feel way better since that was my plan I made during the heat of battle.... and now I'm down a giant spider... oops.
The creativity also extends to the new weapons. At the cost of no longer equipping weapons to your hands and your feet individually (some weapons in the first two games being only for hands OR feet) every weapon now has an entire moveset with their own ways of shooting range attacks, mode of travel, and able to transform into these demon hybrids which can make these weapons looks amazing during a fight. I was going to describe some of them, but frankly I rather leave that as a surprise, even if there's one that I kept on through the whole game for how crazy concept it was.
Right there's the new character too. She's fine... gameplay wise. As a character she's fun, but when actually playing as her she takes a while to get the feel for. Not much to say being real.
So yeah, despite the four stars I'm giving this, I'm truthfully mixed on this game. That might come down to high expectations that were met... but only sometimes. Regardless I did have a lot of fun, even with the problems this and Bayo 2 have I'd be insane to call them boring.

COMPLETELY OUT OF DATE OH GOD THIS AGED POORLY

So... I wanted a physical copy of this game for a while and it arrived just as THAT happened. I know it ain't Bayo 3, but I don't feel comfortable playing this one for the time being.

EDIT: Hmm, seems like the situation is more complicated then it seems. Really wished the article recently released wasn't behind a paywall, but it seems there's a bit more to this whole scandal then we initially thought. Still, I won't jump into 1 & 3 quite yet, instead I'll wait for more info to come out.
And to be clear, even if it isn't what we thought at first, I don't think Platinum would be completely innocent. There's still quite a bit of sketchy stuff going on with them, but it's best for now to wait and see.

LAST EDIT: Think I'll try not to make a statement like this so swiftly in the future. I still standby voice actors not getting nearly enough respect as they should get. They aren't 9 to 5 jobs like a lot of us; they can go a long while without any work. So when they do finally get a role they better be paid well enough so that they'll be set if there is another drought of work, among plenty of other ways they are screwed over.
That all said, yeah no Taylor definitely misheard something. NDA ain't something you break so willingly without a good reason, but a lot evidence really shows how there must've been a misunderstanding. Also throwing the new voice actress under the bus was going too far, even before we got the whole story.
Will I play Bayo 1 & 3... eh maybe? This whole thing just threw me through a loop and frankly I want to step away from it. Maybe my mind will change by the time Bayo 3 comes out, but who knows maybe something more crazy will happen with this whole controversy.

One thing is for sure, I'm tired of editing this to be relevant.


...OK yeah it's hard to believe at this point it was a misunderstanding. Seems very intentional, which sucks royally. NOW I'm done.