Detroit Become Human is the Corvette C8 of video games. Sure, it looks fancy, has that nice shiny coat of glossy finish on it, and can go fast, but it will never compete with the foreign sports cars in any capacity.

Story can carry a video game. It did it for me in Read Dead 2, it did it for me in God of War 2018, and it did it for me here. But, the story only gets a game so far. At some point you need to pause and think if you enjoy this game, or if you just enjoy the world. Detroit would function better as a playable DVD. I hate saying that, because developers have worked so hard to advance games this far; to the ability of practically putting yourself in the world as realistically as possible, but why have it watered down this much?

There is no “gameplay.” I have no idea why there’s a difficulty setting asking you about gameplay, since the only thing you do in terms of gameplay is QTE. That’s it, you press some buttons for 12 hours. Why build this beautiful world with this amazing, customizable storyline, just to have it go to shit when you do anything outside of the story?

It is funny how this very emotionally impactful story is just racism but to robots. I’m not sure if Sony thinks that’s what it’ll take to open the eyes of the racists, but any exposure to POC liberations is better than none I suppose. I just wish the dialogue options weren’t so misleading at times. The specific example I could use is when I was trying to explain to Hank (as Connor) that I do think we’re on the wrong side, a dialogue option that I thought was agreeing was actually disagreeing, saying we’re machines made by humans, and can’t have any self awareness.

The little time you aren’t doing QTE or picking dialogue paths, you’re frantically trying to figure out why the fuck you keep walking all over the place. This is not a 1999 horror game, why are these camera angles and character movements practically tank controls? So many times I’d be walking forward and the camera angle would shift, causing my once-forward movement to go in a completely different direction. After the 3rd hour this becomes incredibly irritating.

Unfortunately, Detroit Become Human falls flat of anything outside of storytelling. This game is everything I dislike about the modern Sony IP. Focusing too much on identity, and too little on what makes video games fun. The constant QTE, the confusing dialogue options, the bad movements, this is the type of game I always refer to when I explain that Sony needs a change of pace. It’s lucky that it’s almost exclusively focused on story, otherwise I feel like it would warrant harsher criticism of all its other parts. I’m pretty indifferent on this game overall. 5/10.

Will say the game loved up to the title shit was def short and I was it was even shorter better yet I wish this shit didn't exist like def one of the worst games I've ever played I want my money back on this free game I remember back when this shit first got leaked and no one had no clue what tf dis was and i remember seeing the concept art of the girl with text on her forehead and I was thinking this shit was not at all silent Hill it looked like shitty p.t. so no way this shit was real 😐😐😐😐😐 man do I wish I was correct like when they announced this game and I saw the cover was the girl with words on her forehead i was just so surprised and not in a good way I knew this game was gon be hot ass and it very much was shit story with shit characters shit writing and a shit twist topped with shit gameplay and a shit ending man like ill say this game has SOME things goin for it like the graphics are great I love the environments and setting not that its at all silent Hill don't get me wrong but still credit where its due and I remember there was like a sink or a bathtub with like a razor or blood or sum like that disturbed me a bit and off that fucking monster designs is just 🤌🤌🤌 fucking peakiest of peak man like ion know if ill get hanged if i say thats my fav in silent hill but ion care i like them way more than pyramid like I said earlier when I saw the concept art of game and I saw them that was the only thing that made me think there's a 1% possible that the game was actually silent hill since that shit looked dope AF and the whole chase sequences with them were scary AF for me def not great but still my ass closed the game when I hit a dead end so ye like i said scary af and i also loved they mixed live action footage for like no reason ion know but I like that alot it's charming like there still bad cus its this game but i respect it as creative decision but yeh that's about all i enjoyed 0.5/10 but 10000/10 monster i feel sick that is the nore than likely the only game they'll ever be in man I hate this planet and this game fuck this game for making such a peak design😾👎

Silent Hill: The Short Message (2024)

Played on: PlayStation 5

When this got announced, many long time Silent Hill fans were extremely skeptical about it being remotely good. The franchise has not been doing great for a long time now, as most people associate the peak of the franchise with Silent Hill 1-4, which are all almost 20+ years old. For me though, I only ever played 2, so I was a bit more optimistic about this new entry than most.

The game being free and only 2 hours long, I wasn’t expecting some groundbreaking game. It’s pretty much just a walking sim, with the main focus being its story.

As for its story though…it’s nothing incredible. It primarily focuses on a suicidal teenage girl named Anita, and her friendship with two other girls named Maya & Amelie. It’s not really the worst story ever told, but it’s told in the most on the nose, in your face way ever. The lack of subtlety within its message or its dialogue is actually criminal. The game would show you something that is supposed to symbolize something, but instead of letting the player find the meaning of the symbolism on their own, characters would flat out tell the player how the player is supposed to be feeling in that moment. It’s really cheap, and terrible acting doesn’t do the story justice either.

Outside of some cool imagery with its art direction in towards the second half of the game, Silent Hill: The Short Message is a very poorly written, bare-bones story about suicide and self harm. Even the warning message about suicide in the games intro feels like a very quick, google-search, copy and paste job done by the team behind this. If this is what the direction they want to take Silent Hill for the future, then yeah…it’s still not looking great for this series.

Elongated sigh of mediocrity.

Pokémon Violet opened my eyes to how I truly feel about the franchise. I no longer feel the same exhilarating rush I used to get when I would play an entry I hadn’t experienced yet.

Why is this? Maybe I simply just grew up, maybe my preferences changed, or maybe Pokémon simply no longer tries. Remember Gen 5’s groundbreaking DS graphics? The 2.5D to give a pseudo 3D effect that really landed? Remember the outlandish sprite designs that we laughed at then, but wish we could go back to? This is just no longer what Game Freak is about.

Of course the semantics of why Game Freak isn’t like this float around the discourse of every Switch exclusive Pokémon game, but I just feel as if they aren’t truly trying their hardest. Especially after a game like Legends Arceus, even if it was full of uninteresting, uninspired dialogue. Gen 9 suffers from the same thing, but there’s somehow even more. Like, please brother, shut the FUCK up every once in awhile. You can’t go more than 5 minutes without wandering into a full on yap session.

I would give them credit of the open world design, if the world didn’t look like a late era Wii game. There are so many beautiful looking games on the Switch, and this just isn’t one of them. Textures feel flat, cities look identical, environments look colorless. There are 2 open world Zelda games on the Switch that not only look better, but run better as well. Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild are 7 years old and absolutely blow new Pokémon out of the water, both stylistically and graphically.

I love the ability to progress how I please, but levels are already set instead of scaled. That means I don’t truly have a choice, I just have the option to go to higher level areas where I’d get my ass kicked trying to train.

Let me go back to the pointless dialogue thing I mentioned, because Pokémon has actually had great storylines before. Black and White, Ruby and Sapphire, Platinum, all memorable. I legitimately just played this game, like, today, for hours, and can’t remember shit. A huge reason for this is the ungodly amount of dialogue that just does NOT matter, so I may have ended up skipping important sections.

This game is also on the verge of being broken. Constant frame rate drops, human characters and Pokémon sprites popping in and out of existence, getting stuck on terrain, 2022 did not ask for this.

The music does slap though. Top tier Pokémon OST.

There are so many better, similar games on the Switch than this, and there’s even a better Pokémon game on the console too. Pokémon Violet succeeds at nothing but the basics, being a somewhat playable game that sounds good, with almost zero memorability to make up for the dreadful gameplay you’ve forced yourself to get through. A good idea, a very bad execution. 3/10.