After trying and failing to get into this game a couple times in the past, I finally hunkered down and finished it. As much as I want to love this game, it just doesn't quite get there for me. The music is stunning and the pixelated visuals are so, so pretty. Despite no words being spoken, the game is able to quite effectively tug at your emotions from time to time. The combat is extremely fun and fast paced, the mix of gun and sword play is something I really enjoyed. despite that, some deaths can feel a slight bit unfair as you can be stunlocked and take damage from consecutive attacks due to a vanishingly short invulnerability window. There is also some awkwardness with the 2.5D art style where you will collide or get hit with things that visually shouldn't be able to from that far away - especially when positioned above them. These two gripes are mostly minor though, my main problem with this game is the sheer amount of secrets that I feel don't really respect the player's time. There are some areas where you'll just want to run up against every single wall to see if there is an invisible gap you can pass through. A good amount of these passages contain items necessary to progression as well. This is somewhat alleviated by there being 8 total, and only needing 4 in each area to complete the game. However, it can still be time consuming and frustrating if you don't know the tells, which are not necessarily obvious and left for the player to figure out. The sheer number of them also deflates the feeling of discovery a bit, especially when the rewards are usually just 1/12th of an upgrade. Overall, I still think it's worth playing simply for the amazing art and fun combat, but don't stress too much over finding every single secret unless you really care about a recolor for your player character.

Buckshot Roulette is a cute little game, played through it a few times. Pretty self-explanatory, you play roulette but with a shotgun - oh and also your opponent is a demon thingy that killed God. If that sounds fun, don't read the rest and just go play it. The final sections of the game grant you random items that add another dimension to the buckshot blasting, and make it more skill-based than just raw rng. It's kinda funny though, how much harder the first section is compared to those latter sections due to its pure randomness. Because the resets are a little slow, this was actually somewhat frustrating on replays. I'd just want to get to those cool latter parts, but I'd get walled by bad rng and have to try that beginning bit over and over. This could maybe be remedied by giving you 3 HP on that starting section, as it's a little too punishing overall I feel. However, I think a solution I'd like to see more is to just include a simple level select after you've beaten the game so you can skip right to whichever part you like. Another thing, while this is meant to be a horror game I personally didn't find it scary at all outside of an eerie atmosphere and general fear of death or losing. That thing I mentioned about your opponent being a demon or whatever? It doesn't matter outside of aesthetics, he plays completely fair. I actually appreciate this in terms of the current gameplay, but when it blasts its own brains out, while funny, it really deflates any sort of fear in the player. I don't think any of this is inherently bad, it just makes me wonder if more could've been done to further the horror aspect of the game. Despite these small gripes, Buckshot Roulette is still a really solid and replayable experience. The visuals and sounds are nice, and the gameplay loop is pretty engaging and easy to pick up due to its simple mechanics. It's always super satisfying to make a correct guess, lifting that barrel against your chin and hearing the click of a blank, or figuring out a line or item combination to checkmate your opponent. Even if you only play it once, it's easily worth the minimum price tag of $1.20.

I think I love this game less for what it is, and more for what it represents. This game is far from a good fit for everyone, and you have to be in a very specific headspace to get the most out of it. It is frustrating, time consuming, and extremely monotonous at times - but it is artful, and it is beautiful. It is brutal and punishing survival as a cute, soft, fleshy little pathetic thing ... an adorable slugcat. It is a brilliant example of videogames as an artistic medium. This game legitimately changed how I view art, videogames as art, and the world as a whole in some minor way. Every element of the game comes together in such a perfect way, not to craft a necessarily "good" experience, but a valuable experience nevertheless. I feel like this game is hard to recommend, but solidly worth it for those willing to plod it out.

Setting whatever moral opposition I have towards Palworld aside, I think its biggest crime is ultimately that it's just plain boring. For all the things it's derivative of, it doesn't especially exceed at anything. The base building and automation involving the Pals is probably the most unique concept the game has to offer, but it's extremely shallow. There's no real strategy, or depth to any of the gameplay whatsoever really. Gunplay is unchallenging and very dull outside of few instances where you may acquire a new toy, such as a Foxparks flamethrower or Mossanda bazooka. However, these moments are few and far between, and their magic fades very quickly. The level of customization allotted to the player in terms of what Pals to use and how to use them is straight forward and uninteresting. It's very obvious what passives are best on what Pals, and you'd build most Pals exactly the same no matter what. Half of the Pals are simply mounts, and the other half don't do anything particularly interesting. The most you get is bland passives like "Water Pals drop more items when defeated," or a flat damage increase for a certain type, there's not really any feeling of meaningful party synergy. Pursuing said customization is also a discouraging process, as on default settings you may be waiting up to 2 hours real time for eggs to hatch late game - an absolutely absurd time sink. I don't feel this way about the other time gated activities in the game, like crafting, because it's encouraging to find a Pal that can craft faster - that's progression! In general the game isn't too terribly grindy, but it definitely picks up later on. I will say that there are a ton of handy adjustable option sliders for tweaking these issues to fit what you want, as well as other things like difficulty. This is very appreciated, but probably not going to be a perfect solution for everyone. Moving away from customization and optimization, lets shift our focus now to collection and exploration. First of all the map is not procedural, which does mean it was actually thoughtfully crafted, but also means that once you've seen it you've seen it. This is especially bad in the "dungeons" because they use the same repetitive handful of tiles over and over again, which makes them super tiresome, and quickly. I actually forgot they existed for like my first 40 hours of gameplay, and they only do so you can get practically meaningless accessories. There is no real story, no lore, no proper world building, or really any other goals or reasons to care about the world you are plopped into. You are only vaguely pointed towards towers, and they end up just being anticlimactic boss fights which are basically just normal Pals with more stats and an irrelevant NPC on their back. Collection isn't much more interesting either unfortunately, as the pool of fresh Pals to discover dries up pretty quickly. They don't evolve, and there's no sense of growth or any feeling of a meaningful relationship building between the Pal and the player - it's all very disappointing. There are a few cool Pal designs, ironically enough they're usually the least obviously plagiaristic (Cawgnito my beloved). Something I would like to genuinely praise the game for is the Pal animations, many of them are quite charming. Despite the aforementioned distance between the Pal and player, they can still be endearing due to the level of character expressed through their animations (Cawgnito my beloved, again). They aren't all perfect, and the non-Pal animations aren't nearly as stellar, but proper good animation work is one of the main things series like Pokémon have been sorely lacking as of late I feel. Speaking of the art generally, the style is all over the place. Having highly stylized, cartoony Pals, anime-inspired character models, photo-realistic guns, and semi-realistic environments all thrown together really makes you feel like you're playing a disjointed asset flip! Music is also completely unremarkable, but inoffensive I guess. I feel like a lot of the game's long term draw is going to be banking on the PvP being worthwhile, because there's no real replayability, value, or depth in any of the present systems. Overall, the game is fun for maybe your first 10 hours at most until you get truly settled into your first base and start to ask yourself "why?" I understand that the game is in early access, and it has some decent foundations. There's a lot of potential here, and as big as those shoes are it should have the funding to fill them. However, I cannot recommend Palworld in its current state to anyone who has any respect for themselves or their time.

I give it a half star for every Pal design I actually like.

This was the first survival horror game I've ever played, unless you want to count Insaniquarium Deluxe, but what an amazing introduction to the genre. The aesthetic and character designs present in this game are so peak, and they are only propelled further by the story. Having played on keyboard and mouse on the highest difficulty, it felt just right - tho I can imagine the gunplay being even more tense on an analog stick. The menuing is very fluid, and I really didn't experience any issues with the inventory limitation of 6. It added to the fear, as often I had to leave weapons or healing behind and leave myself more vulnerable than I otherwise would have to. With proper management, I would have to leave behind some ammo every now and then, but I never felt the need to ferry items around. Especially since I conserved so much ammo given that enemies are extremely resilient on Survival. The puzzles which make up a large majority of the game feel satisfying and fun. Overall this game is an indie gem in the sea of bland walking simulators that plague the horror genre today.

I wish that the 1.2 patch provided separate options for flashlight and eidetic module inventory space. I think the flashlight should take up inventory space, but the eidetic module shouldn't as it encourages the player to just use external options.

Northern Journey is not just a hidden gem, but a truly unique piece of art, and a masterpiece of its genre. As anyone can tell you, the art and music is beautiful and extremely immersive. Sound design on the whole is great, especially involving the environments and combat. The crack from the impact of your rock sling, to the crashing of water down a fall, everything sounds so visceral and satisfying - exactly what you would hope for from an fps adventure game. It's not just that the game looks and sounds nice though, but there's a real sense of cohesion. Seemingly based on Norwegian folklore, the game has a rife bed of inspiration to pull from for its worldbuilding. Enemies are pretty varied, interesting, and sometimes scary, while characters you meet can be strange and freaky but also have nice, subtle comedic moments. And while the game is filled with an air of melancholic, fantastical whimsy, I never found myself lost or confused. I always knew what, how, and why I was doing things. The game does a very good job of guiding the player, but without being annoying or overly hand-holdy. The level design is very nice, and I'd say the game is broken up into two distinct parts. The first half features very intricate areas that loop in on themselves with different shortcuts and paths as you acquire new weapons and items that allow you to access new parts of the map, sorta metroidvania style. The second half is much more linear, and the puzzles take a bit of a backseat to exploration and combat, I would call this the "journey" half of the game. Speaking of combat, the game plays very well. Your character is fast and you have infinite, togglable sprint, controls are responsive and platforming feels good. The weapons are fun and there is decent variety, especially in function (though if you like crossbows you'll be having a field day). While health and ammo are technically limited, there is usually plentiful amounts laying around. If you run out of either you have a small supply of emergency HP potions available to you, and the trusty rock sling you start the game with has infinite ammo and relevant damage through the whole game, so you can always scrape through. The one difficulty the game has never felt too hard or too easy necessarily, it's just a really well tuned and accessible experience. There's also permanent HP and ammo capacity/emergency HP increases hidden around to reward exploration, which I really appreciate. Northern Journey is a truly artful experience, and feels deeply intimate in a way. It's really inspiring that this game was made by just a single developer. Everything about this game blew my expectations out of the water, and it absolutely deserves more eyes on it.

Silent Bomber is hardly very silent. It's similar to Bomber Man, but more action than puzzle or strategy. It's a really short experience, able to be completed in a couple of hours. For the most part it'd like to say it's fun, but it has some terribly tedious sections that can be downright frustrating at times. There were moments I got confused, as it can be really bad at making it clear where you need to go. Along with not explaining things there's a fun little upgrade system, but as far as I know the game never tells you it exists. The difficulty curve is all over the place, some bosses are total cakewalks meanwhile other levels feel almost unfair. My favorites would have to be the water tunnel and the giant elevator shaft, both levels where you are confined to a decent size space that is all visible on screen at once. In contrast the levels that I dislike are either so large you fall victim to screen crunch, or are really cramped to where it's hard to avoid enemies or give your bombs space. You are given special limited "liquid" bombs that you are really never pressured to use on normal enemies, and you don't want to either. Certain boss encounters are extremely obnoxious, but can be trivialized by effective use of the liquids - especially the stun liquid. The CG cutscenes have not aged very well at all, and the story is nothing to write home about. However, the actual graphics have their charm, and the music isn't amazing, but it's not bad. Lastly, there's a score system, it grades how well you do on each mission. However, there's no restart mission or replay mission buttons. Not only can this be annoying, but it also means you can't play a mission again for a high score without playing the whole game over. Overall it feels kinda half baked, but the central mechanic is enjoyable. I actually like the way the game looks and feels, and I hope we see something like this again.

Cute, short game that was actually kinda scary. I enjoy the idea of only being able to have your gun or flashlight active at any given time. The atmosphere is also pretty spooky and well crafted, makes good use of the light mechanic. It was fun and allowed for some "natural" jumpscares that didn't feel super cheap. Gunplay is fine enough, though a bit basic and repetitive. The little notes you find giving story tidbits can be humorous, but don't offer anything too excitingly deep. It doesn't overstay its welcome, but it would be hard to as it's really only about an hour in length. There are alternate game modes like perma-death, no flashlight, and a slightly higher difficulty. However, aside from the idea of relying entirely on the environment or using your muzzle flash for sight, the challenge modes don't really appeal to me. I hardly struggled with the game as-is, and I don't think they would really do enough to spice up the gameplay. It's pretty decent for what it is, not bad by any means, but even on sale it feels a bit overpriced for what you ultimately get.

I don't know what I can say about Dark Souls that hasn't already been said, it's an all-timer. I think the biggest thing I want to remark on is how well it has aged. The weighty and intentioned combat makes the jank feel baked-in, like it's just part of the experience. The visuals also have a sort of timeless beauty to them, the art direction and enemy/boss designs are fantastic. My favorite thing to do in the game was just exploring for secrets and examining every nook and cranny of all the fantastical locales the game depicts. I was most always rewarded with a cool enemy encounter, a sick item, or a pleasant bonfire. The creative map design, and how they twisted and turned in upon themselves always pleasantly surprised me. My only real criticism I have is how in the second half the areas feel a lot less impassioned, a perfect example being Lost Izalith. Not only is the boss just annoying, but the whole area itself isn't interesting at all really. There are hardly any unique item drops to incentivize exploring, and there's very little enemy variety, more than half of which don't even feel like they fit the area. It's not just boring (especially during boss runbacks), but how my partner described it was "full of microaggressions," which I thought was really funny and apt. You have to use a certain ring just for a small section, there's a bunch of enemies but they're mostly just in the way, and you can constantly get caught on the map geometry. Not a big deal individually, but summed together can kinda get under your skin a little. I think this is compounded by the fact that by this time I was kinda set in my build. I didn't really need to level or advance my gear anymore past the point it was already at, meaning there was so point in rummaging around for the disappointing soul drops or anything. This may be a two-fold issue though, as even if there was some cool weapon to be found there I'm not sure it would've mattered to me at that point in the game anyways. It's a shame because the gorgeous and interesting maps the game is mostly made up of are absolutely amazing. Because of all this I felt pretty fatigued going into the DLC, but with how brisk the pace is I didn't feel the urge to rush through and drop exploring altogether, which felt nice. The focal point of the DLC was definitely a lot more boss-oriented, and the areas were not too large to begin with. I would also like to say I beat the game with a spectator, so not a full on guide, but someone to help me when I got stuck. Even coming from other Souls games and RPGs in the past, this game can be very esoteric and confusing at times. I can easily see how you could have a very frustrating experience as a new player. While I think exploration and the joy of figuring stuff out on your own is a big part of what makes this game special, I would recommend playing with a guide of sorts - at least for emergencies. Frankly, I love this game, it's great despite its flaws. I very rarely found myself missing the modern features present in something like Elden Ring. It's extremely solid as-is, and as a result has aged surprisingly well, there's just some unfortunate moments in the later half that can feel lackluster. The only thing more timeless than its gameplay and art is the idea the game represents.

Sheepy: A Short Adventure, as the name suggests, is a short and sweet little platformer. Going into this, I expected something Limbo-esque, and while it was unsettling at points it was overall a quite cute and actually somewhat fast-paced experience. Expectedly, as a game produced by someone majorly known for their music (MrSuicideSheep), the original tracks present in the game are very good. The pixel art here is also really pleasant, everything felt fun and looked fluid. The platforming can be basic, but is really forgiving and enjoyable nonetheless. The game's atmosphere is very compelling and I was very intrigued by the impressive set pieces and interesting tid-bits of lore the game throws at you every now and then. The story is nothing ground breaking, but solid enough to keep you wondering where the game will take you next, and has a pretty satisfying conclusion. Being a short game it does a good job keeping a brisk pace, and keeps each distinct section relatively fresh and unique, as well as still leaving room for exploration. My favorite section was easily right after you get the running power and the level is designed as such to where you can just run out without stopping. Once outside you just keep going and going, covering a massive distance, extremely satisfying and really puts you in the shoes of an animal finally allowed to run free. Also, the fact that the upbeat music has a sort of record scratch whenever you stop in this section is a funny touch. I actually laughed a few times during my playthrough. The game can have a good sense of humor when it wants to, even despite the sort of dark subject matter. Back on exploration real quick, there are a few scattered collectibles and such, as well as challenge and other achievements to go for if you want an excuse to play it again. My only personal gripe is that the first two boss fights are a little too simple and easy, making them unfortunately a bit boring. Overall though, it's just a nice title that I can't really say anything too negative about. It's free, it plays well, sounds good, looks good, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Childhood classic. Not a lot going on here, but simple and entertaining. Looks good and plays well despite its age. Probably won't hold your attention for more than a couple of hours unless you really care about highscores, or the time attack mode. Surprised at the lack of fish variety compared to Feeding Frenzy 1. Lots of palette swaps and very few fish assets are actually new to this game, pretty disappointing. The combo system is fun, and can encourage you to take risks. I think it would be more effective if there was some sort of meta progression incentive, but ultimately this is an old, small game.

Calamity mod follows up base Terraria so well that it's hard to believe. I really appreciate that the art and items stick pretty close to vanilla theming for the most part. The bosses are challenging, fun, and lean more into the bullet hell tendencies of the game. Items are designed really well, it's hard to find too many that are outright disappointing or feel bad to use. It's also a really stable experience, even in multiplayer. The only bug me and my partner experienced was during one of the last boss fights. To my knowledge this is relatively new content, so it's forgivable. Terraria's model of progression is so satisfying I wish it could go on forever. I'm very much looking forward to what future updates have in store.

Being my first FromSoft title I wasn't exactly sure what to expect going in. The first thing I did was spend 4 hours fighting the Tree Sentinel, I didn't do anything else before he was dead. The combat is extremely satisfying, as expected, and I love the level of player freedom both in terms of navigation and build choice. Having played the game three times, I'm going to say the same thing many people have said, in that, this game is amazing your first playthrough. The world feels massive, endlessly expansive, and actually kinda overwhelming at times. However, on subsequent playthroughs that magic is gone, you know what areas have absolutely nothing to offer you, a large majority of the game can be safely ignored. Perhaps that is a good thing, if you just want to assemble your weirdo build asap and have fun taking on the game's challenges like me then that's great, but it's worth acknowledging. The "open world genre," whatever that vagueness entails, has really soured for me over the years and Elden Ring is one of the few games that does so many things right. So much of Souls combat hinges on strong level design. it's not necessarily hard or novel to implement 'soulslike' elements into your combat system, but what so many games fail at is getting the level design right to properly compliment that system. While I do wonder if the game is inherently worse off for being open world, I think Elden Ring does a good job of intertwining open world and more close-quarters segments and succeeds at both, even if I do have a preference.

This game is pure crystallized nostalgic fun to me. The music and art direction are iconic and unforgettable. I really appreciate the whole buffet of bite-sized adventures. They all sport different mechanics, quirks and cute stories that make them interesting and unique (Meta Knightmare Ultra is peak). All of the copy abilities feel good to use, and because of that you also feel free to switch it up constantly, keeping the game fresh. The game is overall pretty easy, and coming back to it I think I would enjoy a bit more challenge outside the boss rush modes. However, this game absolutely delivers on casual fun, which is exactly what I expect from the franchise. Super Star Ultra is basically my perfect Kirby game, and I always find myself coming back to it.