i am so fucking tired of every game being sekiro. please god can one acton game come out where you do something besides read animations and deflect on the right key frames. can one historical game about the tokugawa shogunate have some personality to it and not be more boring than reading a book about the actual events. can one open world game come out and have shit to do in it thats fun and beneficial for more than just clearing icons and getting bigger numbers. anyway, Like a Dragon: Ishin! is available now on digital storefronts everywhere

went into this completely blind; didn't even know it wasn't a quake sequel. also tried the original version first, which definitely made for rough initial impact

quake ii kicks off in a way that i can lightly describe as "complete dog shit". for some ungodly reason, Club Carmack decided it'd be a nice idea to start players off with the worst pistol and shotgun combo known to mankind (even complete without muzzle flash if the og release is your preference). the fun doesn't stop not starting there, though, because then you pick up the grenades and boy oh boy - my personal favorite aspect about them is how they take 35 years to throw, which makes them only remotely viable either around corners or as a tool to very slowly kill yourself with

it was during the entirety of this first level that i thought to myself, "why does this suck so much fucking dick? who enjoys this? can john carmack really be trusted to call steve jobs an idiot for designing a mouse with one button when he actually thinks quake ii is fun?" then i got the one-two punch: the super shotgun and the chaingun

suddenly - enemies died from being shot. i no longer needed to constantly pop from cover to reliably fight hitscan baddies spongier than those seen in 'chasm: the rift' (which, ironically, is a quake clone). things only went up from here - especially in level 3 where the 90 or so grenades i'd been eagerly not using were finally given purpose via a launcher that didn't have 600 frames of startup. i'd say this is when the game really begins

...and barring the last stage - which definitely gets to a point of feeling sluggish due to its over-eagerness in spamming the most aggravatingly tanky two-legged enemy in the game - it doesn't let up. every later earned weapon (that isn't the rocket launcher) continues to feel pretty fantastic. the BFG in particular took me by surprise with its insane splash and chain damaging. you can fire this thing at one enemy and it'll clear out an entire fucking room. it's awesome and thanks to it using the same ammo as the standard laser rifle, there's no shortage of opportunities to let it loose

i'm not much for movement tech in my fps, but the levels here were designed in ways where i was pretty eager to push myself even on that front. lotsa opportunity to master bunnyhopping and circle jumping. i even skipped some chunks of levels with a few well-placed rocket jumps. fun stuff and it made me just a little more interested in giving quake 3 another shot

sonically and atmospherically, everything's obviously downgraded from q1 due to the lack of trent reznor (note: "HUH" is still intact (phew)) but the sonic mayhem soundtrack isn't totally unwelcome. i'll certainly take a competent albeit standard metal ost over the mick gordon-branded djent slop that this genre is so overly saturated with now

i've yet to play any expansions, but i did try a smidge of the n64 stages and found them to be really charming. kinda surreal to see a take of this game with so much color in it. definitely gonna get back to that, but for now i think i'm just gonna go straight for quake 4

made it about to mission 13, doing an ironman and got my shit scuffed

i think that everything that made rekka no ken great is here but this is three failed playthroughs now, two out of apathy and now this one. the maps are too big, i feel like the enemy power ramp is too quick, i dunno. i remember running into this even when i was reloading fights, it just required too many reloads of long fights. and i refuse to get better or smarter!

to be real tho i really do like the idea of doing ironman playthroughs in these games, but without the freedom to train back benchers (they get mulched by a random wyvern knight) its pretty precarious. i might try rekka no ken this way, we'll see if that works out better.

stray thoughts:
1. its cool that roy can marry his social studies teacher
2. echidna is the baddie of all time

"wait - you haven't played quake?"
~almost everyone who i've gushed about this to game in the past few days

a little about me: i'm partial to industrial grit, my favorite doom games favor grimly edgy atmosphere over 80s thrash worship, i'm a big NIN fan and the downward spiral is one of my top 5 favorite albums. so this should be a no brainer, right?

well - yeah, actually. that's exactly right. throughout my playthrough all i could continually ask myself was, "why the fuck didn't i play this sooner?" and rightfully so. i think the reason quake has eluded me for so long is because its holistic reputation is eclipsed at this point by a diehard multiplayer community that i frankly don't give a shit about. i'm not much of a multiplayer enthusiast for anything - let alone tech-y arena shooters - and honestly i probably would've continued ignoring this absolute fucking masterpiece if not for my pressing curiosity towards trent reznor's involvement

that'd have been a huge mistake; quake is easily the best boomer shooter i've ever played

this is where i could talk about how i adore the weapons and their balancing, the general focus on straightforward maps with powerups everywhere, the difficulty being largely driven by how easy it is to kill yourself in tight spaces - or even the god tier ambient score that has just the right amounts of otherworldly screams and metallic chords strewn about - i COULD go into those things and we could be here for a considerable amount of time - but instead of doing any of that, i'm just going to say that the shambler is one of the greatest enemy designs in any fps. in fact, my feeling towards quake 1 can be summarized roughly with my thoughts on the shambler; he's absolutely perfect. i love this giant, dopey, teethy foreskin man in all his fleshy (not furry - fuck you) glory. and i haven't even begun to MENTION his timbs yet

my mans butters be outright otherworldly

The April mud sputters against the tires in the dusk. The lights in the cabin are on, and I can see them inside, making dinner. The ash from my cigarette falls on my skirt and I curse under my breath. I pull the car to a stop, but keep it running. My hope was that they wouldn't be home, or sleeping early, but even now the smell of roast carrots and wild garlic curled through the open window of my truck.

I clomp through the mud into the shed, looking for my tire iron and the Fix-a-Flat. She would see my truck before long, so I needed to work quickly. No luck. By the time I have my tools together, she's there, leaning forlorn against the driver's side door. A gap in the creme yellow, dark coat and galoshes breaking the lines of the metal. I ignore her. She watches me quietly as I take off the wheel, rolling it around to look for the puncture. I hold the tire in the waning light. Nail jammed in the belt, that'd do it. I spray down a line of the epoxy like it could keep her mouth shut but she speaks anyway.

"Good to see you, Tina..."

That fucking Okie-from-Muskogee gaptooth drawl worms its way through me and in it I hear Daisy, feel Daisy and I remember all at once everything I spent a week drinking and crying and trying to forget. Through the ground I feel her grasping from twenty feet away. I don't need to look over to see her, I can feel her through the six feet of earth, as much as I can still feel her on my hands and lips.

"Hey Max. I'm not staying. Just needed to fix my flat."

"Oh...of course. Just hoped you were finally coming home..."

Shut your dumb fucking mouth. Every word you speak is poison. Every dumb fucking overchewed syllable. You sealed me out of this place when you twisted that ring around her finger and let her die.

"Yeah...pretty sure you took what was home and buried it over there..."

I knew I had hurt her. I could see the words turn her meek hope to ash behind her coke-bottle glasses. My cruelty felt like a balm, like I was soothing that itch inside. Like I could kill my pain by making Max take it to the hilt. She could take it. She owed it to me to take it. So I made her. She, in turn, exhaled. I could hear her throat hitch around that hot breath, and I practically began to lick my lips.

"I...I like to think we carry her with us, y'know..."

Garbage, utter shit.

"I'm sure you feel that way, carrying that ring on your finger. Slick little move, that. Cute, how you get to walk around with your little trophy for draining my life of all its love."

I'm tensing like a panther about to go for the throat when Max pulls the ring off of her finger and pushes it into my chest. I feel her heart beating through her fingertips. I realize my own heart has stopped beating. I shut up.

"There is still someone who loves you here."

Time lurches. Her voice is barely strong enough to hear over the genny thrumming behind the house

"Someone who needs you here."

Max is staring up at me, but I can't see her. I'm blinded suddenly as the floodlights flip on. I feel her hand slide down my arm and press the ring into my palm. It's still warm from her finger. My blood pounds alive, and sweat begins to pool around the edge of the ring. I think of Daisy's cold hand as my heart begins its betrayal. I can manage two words:

"Daisy's ring?"

"We have her with us, Tina. Like I said. I want you to keep it...to remind you..."

It wasn't how I imagined it would be while sweating it out in boot camp. The fantasy usually involved Robert Redford, or at least Jack Nicholson. Max wasn't even Shelly Duvall, but this was real. The ring was real. Was the promise? To have and to hold? I wanted to tear the little bitch to shreds a minute ago, but that feeling feels as far away as those days in the barracks. I become acutely aware that I haven't brushed my teeth in days as I pull her to me. She smells incredible, sweat and sugar and woodsmoke. She looks at me like the eye of God, curious dispassion even as she slips her hands into my jacket.

I brush my lips against her forehead, and she pulls me down. Her mouth tastes salty and stale. It's delicious. I let her taste drip into me. I knot my fingers through the dry gnarls of her hair. We press ourselves into each other and for the first time since she died, I stop thinking about Daisy. I take Max into me bit by bit to patch the hole, her spit and sweat a line of epoxy keeping me together.

I have learned not to question the things that keep me alive anymore, I dump one love for another like I would a worn pair of boots or an empty clip. Ten miles away, the dead walk the Earth, but here there is a warm plate of food and a warm bed with a warm, beautiful body in it, and that is enough.

very competent, but not much else. on one hand i appreciate the high-tension, almost dungeon-crawl nature of the levels. you're trained very early on to understand that every corner, item pickup, hell - even secret room is liable to be a deathtrap. kinda reminds me more of a 2000s shooter than a boomer one with its slower pace, which i'm not opposed to

on the other hand... every enemy being a sponge gets pretty fucking tiring at points and resultantly your weapons tend to feel like peashooters (especially against anything running on all fours). there's limb dismemberment, which sells the overwhelming strength that some monsters clearly hold over you - and it can be used to literally disarm the especially tanky ones - but also feels a little undercooked as it's usually a better idea to just shoot someone's head off anyway

level design's a mixed bag. i'm not a fan of the whole "take a wild guess and shoot a hole in the wall" philosophy, but none of the 'puzzles' are too out there to figure out. environments kinda suck though. i found myself enjoying the quake knockoff-y industrial areas the most and really, really was not too fond of episode 2's bland egypt theme (or its shitty platforming). definitely not much of a looker overall

it's pretty clear why some people love this game and some hate it. the generic setup is made a hell of a lot more standout by its relentlessly troll-heavy design, but if you're not a fan of that then there's probably nothing here for you

if chasm: the rift were a person it'd be this scandinavian guy i knew when i was 13 who frequented 4chan and constantly veiled himself in irony as a substitute for personality