All the issues of Breath of the Wild are still issues in Tears if the Kingdom. Dungeons are still way worse than in traditional Zelda games, story is not good, weapons still break too often. And the map is reused in a way that actually does make it feel like the same game again. It's cool that the sky and the depths exist, but all the main content is in the areas you have already explored in the previous game. In my opinion, that alone makes Breath of the Wild the better experience.

Tears of the Kingdom is a pretty messy experience imo, technically impressive at it is. If you've never played Breath of the Wild you'll be more impressed with it but still probably be let down at the game's most visible weak points. I don't think anyone could argue that the Imprisoning War cutscenes were handled well.

It's still a good game with a lot to offer. Ultrahand is awesome. Fusing stuff can be a lot of fun. Caves are a great addition to the game world. The final boss sequence was pretty cool. But I felt like I had already played the game even when it was technically new. It's a solid game but I don't think they did everything they could have to make it an outstanding one

Hi-Fi Rush is incredible. I'm here to mourn Tango's passing, and to tell a story.

I graduated from high school in 2010, got into my second choice college, and lasted exactly 1 semester before getting thrown out. Long story, it was only partially my fault. Point is, coming back home after that was weird. Working full time, doing community college, making and losing friends, meeting the woman I'd eventually marry, I was busy. Busy meant a lot of driving. Driving meant listening to a lot of music. Music meant listening to the local indie station, who, among many other bands, started playing a little Welsh rock group called The Joy Formidable. Of everything they gave airtime, it was their work that resonated with me the most.

As I was playing through Hi-Fi Rush for the first time over a couple sitdowns I joked with friends that the game felt personalized for me and me alone. Rhythm character action cel-shaded comedy? You couldn't concoct a more Demetri-ass concept without also serving me a hot gyro. I enjoyed every single decision made, particularly in the audio department. So imagine my reaction when I get to the surprisingly impactful climax and its gorgeous, massive construction zone, only for one of the most emotionally charged songs of my entire life to start thumping in my ears.

There's not an ounce of embarrassment in my heart when I tell you that I teared up hearing Whirring in the final level of Hi-Fi Rush, and I wouldn't have dared pause to wipe them away. I cannot think of another video game level that made me feel so much so strongly so quickly. I don't know anybody at Tango Gameworks, but I feel like I do. Or should. At the very least I want to thank them personally.

Hi-Fi Rush may not be perfect for everyone, but it is for me. Together we're unstoppable.

I only really played Majora's once before this back in 2018, I was close to finishing a replay of the N64 version in 2021 but stopped in Great Bay. It always ranked low on my Zelda ranking but replaying it now really made me appreciate it way more this time. The darker tone is something I appreciate more nowadays and the dungeon design is really good for majority of it. Coming straight from OoT I realized there was a lot this game did better and stuff it did a little worse in. The 3 day time cycle isn't for everyone but I loved it, it isn't too stressful when you learn the game but can prove to be a learning curve for new comers. It isn't too overwhelming though as song of inverted time really helps make it easier. All transformation masks are really fun to use with Zora being my personal favourite. The side content is some of the best in any game, the Anju and Kafei side quest is probably my favourite side quest in any game to this day.

The original 3DS version isn't that good, nerfs difficulty heavily and adds stupid stuff like eyeballs and removed a lot of what made the original good. Project Restoration really fixes almost everything, there are stuff it can't fix like Gyorg and Twinmold completely but it does the best it could and is a really good way to play the game and probably the best until 2 Ship 2 Harkinian comes out later this year.

A couple months ago, I decided to breathe some new life into my old, beat up Sega Dreamcast, and transferred its internals into a new shell. While I was up in them guts, I figured I'd go the extra mile and put in a PicoPSU, Noctua fan, and (most importantly) a GDEMU clone. I own three Dreamcast games on disc, they're all Sonic and they're all scratched to hell, and considering the longevity of Dreamcast disc drives, it did not pain me to rip that sucker out of there. Besides, an SD card opens me up to games I'd never dream of affording...

Anyway, I 100%'d Sonic Adventure 2 again. God damnit, why do I keep ending up here?

I explicitly told myself I would not, but looking at my childhood save file, I was maybe eight to ten hours of actual work shy of running through Green Hill, which I've previously unlocked twice on two different versions of the game (the Dreamcast original via emulation, and Battle for the GameCube.) It's not like I had something to prove so much as I hated the idea of leaving something undone, even if it meant feeding a Chao the same skeleton dog over and over again for three hours while alone in a dark room. Oh well, my time could not be less valuable.

I bring all this up because I'm going to say some fairly disparaging things about Sonic Adventure 2 - which for a lot of people sits in this exalted "sacred cow" position - and I just need everyone to accept that I've done my time with this game and feel pretty strongly about it.

Sonic Adventure 2 condenses Sonic Adventure's six distinct gameplay styles into three, and makes each of them more robust, which on paper sounds great. Sounds like something you'd do with a sequel, cut all the filler and build out from what worked... Only, I think adding more to the mech and emerald hunting stages makes them a total drag to play. What was once arcadey and enjoyable is now bloated and boring, sometimes outright frustrating. Sonic and Shadow get the best levels of the bunch, but given how often these brief bursts of fun are interrupted, does it even really matter?

Even setting aside my grievances with the way these modes are designed, I feel like Sonic Adventure 2 is just... sloppy. It has the collision detection of a cheap D-tier licensed platformer, with characters constantly juttering and clipping when making slight contact with uneven surfaces. Even flat surfaces are temperamental given how often Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles will catch on some 1 pixel tall seam. The camera is uncooperative, characters move inconsistently, and every part of the geometry feels like it's held together by Elmer's glue and tongue depressors. So much as brush a corner wrong and the game will shut off whatever complex calculation it needs to run to determine momentum. Having done this three times now, I can confidently say the worst part of the 180 emblem experience is fighting with the parts of the game that are unpredictable, like, you know, landing on a solid stationary platform and just falling through it.

This is all coming from the guy who frequently writes Labyrinth Zone apologia on Backloggd Dot Com, so I can't stress enough that my opinion on this shouldn't be taken as some condemnation of those who enjoy Sonic Adventure 2, or a statement that I'm more right for having a dissenting opinion. There's thousands of you and uh... I don't think there's even a dozen people that like Labyrinth. And hey, Sonic Adventure 2 isn't without its charm. I've previously praised the excellent soundtrack, which I remember owning once on CD (which also got scratched to hell), and though I hated the tonal shift SA2 made at the time, I think it's probably the best part of the game now. The voice clips cutting off, Grandpa Robotnik being put in front of a firing squad... it's not good, but it's good.

Unfortunately, it's not enough to bring me around on the game as a whole package, and I feel like the amount of hours I've logged both qualifies my dislike while calling into question my sanity. Sometimes you go for 180 emblems in Sonic Adventure 2 while playing Mario Party 6 while playing In Sound Mind while playing Shining in the Darkness. Sometimes you're just that kind of depressed, where you're glad you don't live with someone who could walk by your room and see you running through Mad Space and think "oh god he's spiraling." But it doesn't matter now. I'm finished. I never have to do this ever again.

Oh hey, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is on sale on Xbox...!

A pretty flawed game in terms of how it handles quests and story but an incredibly ambitious one. I can't think of anything else that would make you wait 30+ hours to unlock one of the main selling features, but there's something about working your way up as a blade on that harsh planet that makes the moment you finally get a skell license and eventually take flight so special and satisfying... It completely changes the world you've come to know so far. Soaring around an exceptionally designed open world fighting monsters in the sky with Hiroyuki Sawano music blasting is something you won't find anywhere else.

So many things about XCX make it feel like a true evolution of XC1, in gameplay and art design, complex mechanics, intricate area layouts, so much customization and freedom, that were all just thrown out of the window for the next entries. The whole thing feels genuinely impossible to pull off on this toaster of a console, its scale and visual fidelity impressed me more than anything on Switch ever has. In the best way it doesn't feel like a Nintendo game at all.

I really enjoyed spending most of last month chilling exploring this alien planet. It's just been sitting on my shelf for years unplayed after I failed to get into it before, and it ended up being my most enjoyable Xenoblade experience since the original. 1 and X truly feel like they're in a different series from 2 and 3 to me. Had I played this back in 2015 I don't think I would have been nearly as impressed by BOTW, or any open world for that matter. I would recommend checking it out now because any future port is going to be missing some stuff, it's very tailored for the Wii U unfortunately.

Even as someone who was very excited for the game since the demo dropped, I didn't expect to be THIS in love with the final product. It's genuinely unbelievable that it's Shift Up's first console project. This is a technical marvel packed with eyecandy environments, models and effects that still runs at 60fps the whole time at a 30GB file size. In a lot of ways it feels like the first true 9th generation game I've experienced, and finally not a remake or sequel of anything else. So many moments where I was genuinely blown away by what I was seeing and experiencing, like arriving in the main city for the first time. Still shocking that SIE decided to back this so hard in publishing and promotion as it seems to go against everything the company is about in recent years but it's a move I'm thankful for.

Stellar Blade harks back to the PS2 era, unashamed of being a video game and prioritising gameplay above all else, with a ton of unlockable outfits and new game+ free on day one. Not to say that its design is primitive in any way as it incorporates all the best parts of modern gaming too. Areas are a mix of linear setpiece based levels and more open exploration. I liked how the side missions took you to new locations and had actually great rewards, and in general it's not a ridiculous time sink like a lot of modern games. Combat is an absolute blast, a fusion of other great actions like Sekiro, Bayonetta, even Resident Evil at times. Very reflex heavy swordplay wth a variety of different ranged firearms as well. With the amount of skills and specialized equipment you can collect you'd think it would get too easy after a point, but you will still get put in your place by the brutal boss fights at the end of the story. The grotesque monster designs and the elaborate animations for dismembering them are just on another level, every encounter sticks out in my memory. And I've seen criticism of it but I personally loved the parkour and Uncharted style climbing around the world. I felt like there was such a huge variety to what I was doing for my whole 40 hours played and it was mixing multiple genres I love perfectly. Finally if this game doesn't at least take nominations for best OST of the year it will be an absolute crime because it's constantly hitting your ears with objectively heavenly sounds, the most atmospheric emotional vocal songs seamlessly switching to more intense versions when fighting. Combined with the landscapes and art design you just gotta stop and take it all in sometimes.

This achievement has been overshadowed by some REALLY braindead controversies over the last few months and I've also seen a lot of hate from fans of the other series that clearly inspired it. It's a new IP so harsh critics are to be expected but I look forward to more people warming to it and realizing how it's actually a love letter to those things and an amazing game in its own right, and I hope EVE will be respected one day like Bayonetta, 2B etc have come to be. This singlehandedly made me feel less doomer about the game industry, if we can still get stuff like this every once in a while we may be alright. I will be eagerly awaiting whatever these devs make next on console

Even though this game’s story was mediocre and boring, and the dialouge was wattpad levels of cringe, the gameplay more than made up for it. Really that’s what you should play this game for.
I never thought a first person, run and gun, platforming shooter would play so smoothly and fast and fun but here we are. Neon White promotes speed running so well.
The leaderboards, for one, really made me competitive and constantly drove me to finish a level with a better time than before to beat my PS friends. As I rewatch clips of some of my best runs, I realize “Oh shit, I probably could have beaten the level fast had I done this” and then I go back to the lab.
I constantly felt the need to get better, and I’d like to think I did. I found my self skipping entire portions of levels completely on accident sometimes. Not just that, you’re able to reset levels with the simple press of a button rather than going to the menu and selecting an option, which added even more haste when it came to subsequent runs of levels All the abilities were consistent with the level design, and something that I noticed as I played more was that every time a gun was left unused it was always to access a shortcut.
The vibes this game gave were also great. The environments ranged from an area like the final world from kh3 to majestic ruins to a complete hellscape. The geometry of this game was super well done. and man don’t even get me started on the music. I know nothing of machine girl but she went CRAZY for this game’s soundtrack.
All in all, play this game solely for it’s fun and fast gameplay. I guess you can try and fw the story but it’s nothing too special.