Despite being a huge Metroidvania fan this was my first Castlevania. It was cool! I really enjoyed all the different monster sprites, especially the bosses. Top notch GBA art direction. My only main gripe is that by the time i finished the game i had guessed there was a secret ending but decided not to get it because i had become bored with navigating the castle. Movement is not particularly fun or interesting so it got tedious running back and forth. A late game item to warp to a warp room from anywhere would have helped a ton with map cleanup though in fairness this is a common problem in the genre. Otherwise p cool game might check out some more castlevania soon.

This game is incredibly slick. The puzzles flow seamlessly into each other and every part of the world has been designed so that you never have access to more than you need to solve the puzzle immediately in front of you. Its all really brilliantly put together, puzzle design at its most accessible. But in being so well put together it is almost too smooth.

Cocoon was designed by Jeppe Carlsen, best known for his work on Limbo and Inside. What’s interesting about Cocoon is while it appears very different from those games at the outset, it ends up sharing lots of dna. The camera never cuts, flowing through and around pieces of the world as you navigate, your characters verbs are simple, and most importantly, you never stop moving forward. Cocoon is filled with “aha!” moments, but i can count on one hand the number of times i actually got stuck. It does this in the interest of keeping you moving forward but in doing so i find the whole game also flows together in my mind. Those points where i got stuck end up being the only parts i can really strongly remember, the rest of the game slipping through my fingers like sand. The world itself is gorgeous, and the sound design truly evocative. The puzzles are well paced and it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but i expect the gameplay itself to be something i largely forget about in the coming years.

Cocoon is a truly singular experience, unlike anything ive ever played, but its a puzzle game without any room for player expression. Its a game where solving a puzzle often feels more like connecting the dots than discovering a solution. Here are your blocks, here are your sockets, please plug the blocks into the sockets in the only way they can possibly be plugged in, well done, proceed. You get more friction in the final section of the game, but then its over, and im left kind of wanting more, but also feeling like any more complexity would start becoming more annoying than fun as juggling all the orbs starts to get a bit tedious once you have four of them. Ultimately, i enjoyed my time with cocoon, and its aesthetic trappings will likely stick with me for a long time. I just wish the game had been willing to take the training wheels off sooner.

Ill probably keep playing this off an on for a bit, but it hasnt really gripped me the way i wanted it to. Its a fun enough golf game but im finding it hard to find an understanding of its ball physics and how your shot distance relates to the power meter. Also where in mario golf mistiming the bottom of your swing means the ball slices right or left here it seems a mistiming means your ball arbitrarily magnetizes towards the nearest hazard. Is this intentional or is this just part of how golf courses are designed? No idea. Minus one star because apparently the japanese version of the game has Kiryu in it but i have the US version and its rude that i cant have him.

Game highlight: i like how animals roam around the courses. They dont seem to interfere theyre just hanging out.

I love fallout theoretically. Fallout 3 was extremely formative and for that reason it remains one of my favorite games of all time. Since then i have enjoyed every subsequent fallout less than the prior. Is this because of nostalgia or have the games actually been getting worse? I suspect its both.

Wha surprised me about revisiting 76 after years of updates (i played at launch but tech issues and an empty lifeless world put me off very quickly) is that 76 might be the first since 3 that i enjoy more than its predecessor. Many of my annoyances with 4 are also present here. Crafting is tedious and over emphasized, the guns still feel largely terrible to shoot, and there are very few if any memorable questlines. I spend way too much of my time collecting, sorting, and hauling my junk back and forth to my campsite. Yet somehow im finding myself feeling much more forgiving of these flaws.

It could be that while fallout 4 came with a shock of “wait no this isnt what i wanted” 76 is now establishing this is the new status quo and im becoming resigned. It could also be that watching the game bomb so spectacularly at launch and then spend years carefully improving makes it feel like a scrappy underdog. Truthfully its both. Fallout 76 is both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure because the scars of its troubled lifecycle are deeply obvious to even the most casual observer. It’s obvious when you find a quest from the base game versus a newer addition. The former almost always comes from a robot you find in a strange location and generally involve gathering items and reading notes from dead people. You will also frequently find locations that are fascinating and well realized while also being completely devoid of human life, reminding you that oh right there used to be no characters in this rpg. Its odd and messy but its clear that the people behind the game know this, and are playing with these contrasts as they continue to expand its world.

In 76 you leave the vault with the express goal of rebuilding the wasteland using your scrappy know how and the base building interface that i expect we will see in every bethesda game for the rest of time. Many updates post launch, and this narrative theming actually meshes mechanically with the games mechanics and world design in a way bethesda games hardly ever do. The wasteland was empty when you emerged to rebuild. Now its not, because npcs returned and began to rebuild alongside you. There is a tangible sense that what happened in the games narrative mirrors both what happened in the narrative of the games development and my personal experience of the game as a player who has dipped in and out over the years.

This is getting very long, and im hungry, so tldr game is kinda good now. It is probably better than 4 in my estimate if only because the narrative if 4 was so terrible. Its not revolutionary, but its fun enough. And yes, i Bandwaggoned because the show was good fight me about it.

Listen, im probably one of the biggest Homestar Runner guys you're liable to meet, but this game is mostly bad. This is a collection of three "roomisodes" set entirely in Strong Bads self invented crooked cop/noir/action movie franchise, "Dangeresque". A "roomisode" is just a clever way of saying these are point and click adventure games that are each limited to one room, making them quick bite sized experiences that are mostly designed to deliver gags. The first of the 3 was originally released as a flash game some 15 ish years ago, the second was started around the same time but never finished, and the third was made brand new for this collection. Unfortunately this means that while the third roomisode is the most fun, funny, and polished of the three, the first plays like a flash game from some 15ish years ago. The second is somewhere in the middle. It seems odd to say when mechanically they are all identical, but the Brothers Chaps have grown as artists in the past 15 years and it shows! Part three is more clever, less grating, and has better gags than the other two parts. Im glad i decided to finish it (i considered dropping the game after part 2), but as a package it might be a hard sell even for the most die hard of die hard Homestar fans.

Game Highlight: i actually thought the 3d cutscenes were pretty neat. I liked the pixelated 3d render look. Also the third roomisode had a fun premise and twist.

This game is a mess. Its tonally inconsistent in a way that feels arbitrary rather than considered, and its systems are nonsensical. Does it actually matter if i pee regularly? Why do i have to eat when i can go several chapters on “very hungry” with no consequences? Why are we tracking morality points when they dont have any bearing on the ending? Why is it sometimes immoral to fleece people for cash and other times its fine? Why is it moral to recruit people into a shady cult but immoral to save yourself from human traffickers ? Its fully nonsense in a way that is tiring instead of engaging.

The moment to moment gameplay is also unfortunately tedious. I played almost the whole game with a guide open because it was so incredibly unclear how i was meant to progress at all times. The game constantly wants you to speak to specific unmarked npcs in a specific order with no clear logic as to who you need to speak to next. Its peak bad adventure game design, pixel hunting for dialogue often in levels that are tedious to navigate. The flooded apartments are a notable low point for this and are the core reason i abandoned the idea of a second play through.

The game is simply at odds with itself whiplashing between real human tragedy and wacky sideplots worthy of a Yakuza substory. Unfortunately it lacks the compelling core narrative and endearing characters that define that other much more successful franchise.

Ultimately though, i did finish the game. The premise and setting were compelling and unique. Navigating the immediate aftermath of a large scale earthquake is something i havent experienced in a game before. While the game eventually collapses under the weight of its own disjointed ideas, the first hour or two was enough to get its hooks in me. I think id hesitate to recommend the game to most people, but ill be waiting for the announcement of Disaster Report 5 with some small amount of anticipation.

Game Highlight: i really enjoyed how delightfully low budget this was. This is a prime example of whater mean by shorter games by people who are paid more etc etc.

Ive set this down long enough to mark it as no longer playing. This game obviously blew up for a reason but i found after the initial few hours of discovery i really want just a little bit more determinism in my runs. Its hard to stay engaged when i think “oo i wonder if i could do a run that goes all in on X” and then you just never get any cards to make that run possible over the course of an hour.

Game highlight: the visuals! What incredibly delicious art direction here. I love the look and feel of everything here.

I think Ghostwire is neat. Its a game that falls flat in many ways but its world is so gorgeously detailed and well rendered that I hardly need an excuse to spend time in it. I love running through the streets and over the rooftops of a haunted Tokyo forever locked in a moody rainstorm. Im glad the Spiders Thread update/dlc exists because it gives me an excuse to come back and soak in the atmosphere a little longer.

The new content that makes up this update is interesting as it serves simultaneously as more of the same, an evolution of the original games potential, and an magnifying glass to highlight all of the games existing flaws. There is a small new area with a questline that serves as the most in depth sidequest the game has to offer. Its fun and decently spooky even if theres. nothing here that ghostwires horror contemporaries havent already done better. There are 3 new enemy types which range from cool to annoying. I love the mermaids who swim through the pavement and keep you constantly checking all your angles. I dont love the hovery guys who are hard to hit and love to fly around in places out of your reach. The new combat abilities are mildly interesting but struggle to find a home in combat encounters that were designed before they existed. The exception here is the dodge which is such a no brainer inclusion i cant imagine how they skipped it the first time.

The meat of the update is the new Spiders Thread mode. This is a run based rougelike inspired mode where you will tackle increasingly difficult levels of a sort of dungeon set in the ethereal otherworldy spaces that played heavily into the games launch trailers but ultimately dont show up too often in the main game. The problems with this mode are esentially all the problems that existed in the base game. Ghostwire is a game in which all of your abilities feel terrible until you max your skill tree, at which point you will finally feel base level competent and wonder why the game didnt just start you at this power level. Spiders Thread exacerbates this by resetting all your abilities to 0 and making you unlock them again. There was an opportunity here to throw lots of wild game breaking modifiers on top of the end game powers to make things new and exciting, but the opportunity is passed over. On the positive side the new abilities like a stealth zipline takedown and ground pound have alot more room to shine in combat arenas designed with them in mind. The spiders thread arenas also get to lean more into the otherworldly architecture and spacial design that I desperately wanted more of in the original game. It doesnt go as hard as i would like but ive only seen about half the floors, so things may get wilder as you progress. Oh you also get to hang out with a big magical cat and rescue strays.

Ultimately, its a decent enough mode and its cool to see how the developers restructured the game in a new way. The entire update is meaty, with lots of new elements to dig into. Its very generous to release this all for no cost. Theres lots here that i wont be experiencing (two new sets of collectibles are just not worth my time) but i think someone playing the game for the first time will have a much more accessible and fully realized experience. This is definitely the “definitive Ghostwire experience”.

I was bored with Tales of Arise, then i was having a ton of fun, then i was bored again. There are only like five enemy types in this game and the combat gets stale once you stop gaining new party members to change things up. I generally liked the characters, but the story was pretty much nothing so it failed to keep my attention. Not sure if i dont have the patience for these long character RPGs or if i just keep playing the wrong ones.

Game highlight: gorgeous environment art, i was always excited to see a new area.

I was going to be snarky and say this isnt as good as Holocure but having put a solid few hours in now i do actually prefer Holocure. Its very likely this comes down to play context, i mostly play holocure on my couch where i only play VS on my phone while commuting. Mainly i just think 30 minutes is too long. Its rare that i make it to 20 and then fail to make it to 30 and those last 10 minutes feel like the game is holding me hostage. It was a great commute game when i regularly died earlier in my runs but now im further in that rarely happens. I get why this blew up though. The loop is definitely satisfying. I just prefer the version with an anime coat of paint and a fishing minigame.