I can fully and freely admit that I unabashedly missed the fuckin' bus on this one. Multiple times.

Game's good. The music is good, the buttons are responsive if you set them up right, the animations are really fluid and nice to look at, so everything you expect from a free rhythm game that was Kickstarter funded and spent an extended period of it's dev time in the dark is here.

Plus, the best week is the most recent one with the original Pico's School gang. Music, cutscenes, animations, plot, it's got it fuckin' all and that's what god demands of the little redheaded psychopath with a lego brick looking pistol. It has Newgrounds slathered all over it and it's amazing.

If you're like me and ignored the hell out of actually playing FNF because the fandom surrounding it are mostly children who if they saw Pico's School in current year they'd be traumatized, you can give it a try now. It's genuinely good and don't let their fucked up cringe nature drive you away from trying it now while it's still free.

"An incredibly fun if slightly limited RTS third person shooter published by Nintendo" sounds exactly like something that doesn't exist outside of maybe the Starfox series, but here Battalion Wars goes proving that wrong in spades.

It's super good, all around. The music, the missions, the units, the variations, it's all really really good. There's a handful of exceptions of course, Air Superiority is in full force but that's a major thing in real military conflict, the vehicles are some of the worst controlling things I've ever had to play with including rough steering and physics that are either too heavy or WAY too light, and some units just bluntly outclass all other types such as Assault vets who's machine guns can mow down every infantry unit and some vehicles and emplacements with ease. But all in all, it's pretty great.

Huge kudos to the near blatant WW1/WW2 era Germany antagonist nation fused with Transylvanian vampires that are the revival of the undead warmonger empire of pure unbridled nothing held back Nazi references for 2 of the last four missions. This game is fucking wild and it takes itself completely seriously and I'm all here for it.

I'm ecstatic that these games are finally playable off of steam now, And they play very very well! I'd totally be down to recommend dropping 7-9 dollars on this nowadays!

I only wish for 2 things. 1 is World 3 in 60 FPS, which is something that should be coming eventually, so cool!

The second is wishing the movement was bridged together a lot better. There's the sense of Nostalgia keeping world 1's movement, world 2's movement, and world 3's movement, all bridged together by a hub with world 4's movement, but I wish they were all unified. The modern movement system is so fluid and fun to mess around with that world 1's is just radically inhibiting.

It's the first MMO I really got into and I'm happy it's been redone by fans again.

Great little experience, lots of fun stuff to do, incentives to stop playing rather than playing for longer, and the entire game is free. I really recommend it.

If you've got a group of people hunting for a new MMO to play after getting burnt out on FANTASY WORLD or FANTASY WORLD or even FANTASY WORLD, BUT WITH GUNS then feel free to dawn a mask and be a hero or a villain for a while. It's free and a fun time even in a world where the original release is a cool TWO DECADES OLD.

Very cute, adorable dog game. If you've got nothing better to do and wanna quickly have a good time doing the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do irl, the game is for you. There's not a ton of game here, but there doesn't have to be. It's a cute little game for cute little guys and gals and nonbinary pals who just want to be a mischievous lil doggo.

What else is there to say? It's free, you can beat it in like an hour, why are you even reading reviews? Just get it.

Just be warned the controller controls are a little finicky and you're probably going to have to figure out how to change the language settings.

In a world where the only major and breathing wrestling game series is WWE 2K, Wrestling Empire is a steroid shot to the gut. It uses it's simplified engine to it's advantage, it's Superstar Mode is a far deeper dive into the mechanics than 2K has ever given us, and it's generally just a hilarious time dicking around and doing whatever and making fun characters who will implode with rapid intent.

It's great, if you want a Wrestling game and are fucking tired of WWE 2K releasing the same shit and saying it's new and unique and interesting like the Fifa Series then pick up Wrestling Empire and just have a blast. M Dickey will thank you.

Damn they made 23 of these things? crazy.
Bold move to make the cover blank, but hey it's their game.
And yeah, it's alright. Online hasn't been shut down yet, you can still buy the game unlike older releases, but my god I wish they brought back MyCareer as a freeform do what you wish fuckaround mode. The storylines the game gives you in this one sucks, and the mode that sorta gives you that doesn't do it in nearly the same fleshed out way that 16 had it.

Oh yeah and the entrance/victory creator is beyond bad in comparison. So slow, so buggy, so irritating, and so much of it forces you to use preexisting superstar templates for everything. Is it really so much to ask for just general pyro for stage, ring and ramp instead of "HERE IS THIS SUPERSTAR'S PYRO WOOOO-"

I want you to understand that barring Meta elements, Helldivers 2 deserves 5 Stars. As a game it's so fucking chaotic in every way, from it's world building and it's locations and it's presentation and it's gameplay, it's genuinely a blast every single time I pick it up and play it.

At the moment, however, I'm only really comfortable rating it 4 because the current meta for most things feels kind of claustrophobic. Especially in range of "Stratagems you can use to kill hives/factories". If you don't have someone willing to carry the 500kg bomb during the mission it's leaps and bounds different from if you do. And that's just because "Oh there's a problem. Throw the 500KG bomb and let's get out of here." is a perfectly valid strategy at that point.

There's also the issue of enemy variety being super limited, pretty sure from all my playing there's less than 10 types of enemies the game can throw at you max, maybe 12, and that's cut in half because the only two factions are bugs (Easy outside of the big ones) and Automatons (They will all kill you if you stop to breathe). So I hope you enjoy fighting the massive swarms of identical enemies with supporting "Bigger guys who are harder to take out" and "Dudes that have a ranged attack that will either fuck you up or instantly kill you dead". More variety in what you can blow up is absolutely necessary.

There's also the issue of needing more armor types and what those armors can do. Armors all look pretty good but statwise they all roam around the same 5/6 additional effects that lead them to feel pretty similar. The progression is pretty grind heavy too, so unless you're prepped to play this game every day and throw yourself into identical mission again and again you're really not ready to see how long it'll take for you to get a kit that feels visually and mechanically distinct from the 3 other friends you're dragging around screaming into the game. Especially if you're all going in from a fresh save file and trying to keep pace with one another.

Again, don't let this dissuade you, Helldivers 2 is a fucking fantastic masterpiece of a game right now and the way that the game feels is great, the way the devs and the community are interacting is hilarious, and the way the game is being paced is really really good. But on the other hand it really feels like this game screams Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Hyper grindy early game/mid game, by the time you get to the end game you're either devoted to it or burnt the fuck out of it, and realistically there's so little here that it's relying on future content updates to keep it's audience attracted and entertained. It's just a matter of who wins: The speed of development or the declining attention span of the game's ideal recurring player base in a year of gaming that feels like it's industry as a whole is repeatedly swinging home runs at the wallets of gamers all around the world.

Persona 3: Reload is a rerelease of Persona 3 with a little bit of Persona 3:FES and Persona 3:Portable mixed in. This means that Persona 3: Reload at the time of writing is the new 3rd option when it comes to "Which version of Persona 3 is the Best Version to play?" Which is a shame. We're slowly reaching 2 decades of this argument and we still don't have a definitive answer purely because Atlus keeps doing Atlus stuff.

And it's that which keeps it down in my eyes. This should be radiant and praised and it has been! And I agree with everything everyone's saying for the most part! The music is pretty good in my opinion, the game looks stunning, the combat is fluid and fast, the new Tartarus is amazing, every social link being fully voiced is lovely, and the new systems that were added or back ported from 5 are phenomenal in this!

And yet! We're missing significant content from this release that keeps it from being the Definitive Version! We don't have the Answer, the absurdly decisive epilogue to the story that, like it's difficulty or not, is crucial for understanding what's going on in everyone's heads and why they joined the fight. And we don't have Fem!Protag, Atlus's dark horse persona character who gets as much attention as P1 and P2 do. I swear the put her in PQ2 to get everyone's hopes up then completely abandoned that arc because it would be even funnier to not finish it.

Genuinely, this is an amazing rerelease through and through. But it won't be a 5 star S Tier game until Atlus gets off their ass and finishes the content everyone's been waiting for. Even Akihiko's been waiting for this.

While playing the ever so slightly disappointing Splatoon 3 Side Order, my boyfriend got me this. I've heard great things but I didn't think it'd catch me quite this hard, and I've had some pretty serious medical conditions that didn't grip my immune system quite like Balatro.

I mean this in the best way possible, Balatro is pure unbridled flair given form. When you get down to brass tacks, it's gameplay revolving around a very very simple concept cranked up to an absurd degree and it's exactly what you want to see in something so effective. Everything revolves around the core mechanic of the game, nothing seems out of place, and god does this game evoke such a sick sense of style while doing so.

I beat my first run in 30 minutes of owning the game, but unlike Side Order where I was left with a sense of empty "Is this really it?", this still has more to give. Unlockables, difficulties, new decks, more cards, it's exactly what a roguelike should be. Easy when you want it to be, hard when you want it to be, but entirely up to you and your skill when it comes to choking a perfectly good run away like a goddamn champ.

The writing and lore is pretty good, the game looks and sounds great. But my god is it the most Mid roguelike there is. Runs either end right when they're getting good or end too soon at all, floor variation isn't nearly as wide as you'd think it should be, enemies don't scale with completion they stay the same the entire time, and 100% completion is locked behind beating that same identical tower 12ish times while fighting the same 9 generic enemies and 4 bosses again and again.

There's a whole lot of potential here. Enemies could have modifiers, floors could start meshing together, the tower could get bigger, the main story could last longer than FINISH ONE RUN. The color chips are fun, buying new subs and specials are great, and I'm absolutely still going to beat it with every weapon because goddamn it am I invested in those lesbians and Acht's story.

But gameplay wise my god does it need more.

Rockstar has an amazing catalog of games that exist to shock, and exist to emulate realism, but to me my favorite game of theirs will ALWAYS be Bully. I don't care what anyone else says.

This game is what happens when you get adults who are really good at writing to write really flawed and awful characters, all with seemingly the express purpose of making the already flawed and messed up protagonist seem like a good guy and it's done well in spades. The dialogue is great, the missions are all really fun and interesting, the gameplay is super satisfying, the minigames and collectables are fun to do and mostly give lovely rewards, and the story is really satisfying to play through even with it only taking about 15 hours compared to the usual Rockstar length of 30 or more.

Only complaint I have to throw up here is playing this game on modern hardware leads to a lot of crashes, but there's a number of fan patches that fix the game up to be something a fair bit more playable. If you only have the choice of playing 1 Rockstar game, and you don't want to play GTA because it's way too controversial, pick up Bully. It's just messed up to be entertaining while not pushing that to an uncomfortable point...usually.

Highway Blossoms has a fantastic story. It's genuinely really good for a cute little road trip/treasure hunting story with two disaster lesbians. The visuals are good, the writing is alright, the voice acting is only slightly grating at certain times, the music is fine, and there's even some optional smut for the people who don't just want to experience a wholesome story.

Now you might read that and then ask "Why did you only give it 2 stars? Is it not a good game with all that praise?" and that's the thing. It's not a game. Highway Blossoms is a prime thing to point at when it comes to the whole "What makes something a game" argument.

I'm not playing a game when I play through Highway Blossoms, I'm reading a book but instead of flipping a page every few minutes I'm mashing spacebar a couple thousand times. The story is good but you're not acting in it, you're just a third party. There's no action the player can take to do anything, you're just reading a book or listening to the characters speak to one another. There is no gameplay. It does not exist.

I think Highway Blossoms is a beautiful and really engaging story with all sorts of twists and turns. And I do recommend you give it a read. But I wish that way to experience it was as an anime, or a short mini series, or a book. Or anything that doesn't destroy your mouse or your keyboard to read. It took me about 10 hours to finish, but it probably could be read through in about 9. After that it'll sit in your steam library for the rest of time. Because past your first reading, there's no reason to go back.