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been playing hella yugioh and moved back 2 my parents place which might indicate illness & questionable judgment 2 some (πŸ§β€β™‚οΈ) but confident in saying this is juiced. played this with a 2016 mod or smthn similar that added in cards up until then & just went absolutely 2 town with some green/white creature spam. just gets that i like being teased a lil with some perfunctory side quests and random encounters until i can go in the shop & get that one absolutely busted card that'll take my deck from celtics shaq at the free throw line brick machine to the most consistent bomb after bomb pile u've seen since the obama administration. late 90s British pc gaming influence all over this tooooooo every piece of armor is grainy as fuck all the sorceresses & enchantress sprites are just recolored elviras every creature from beyond the grave has glowing red eyes. shit just closes itself automatically when u beat the game too no credits no nayfin this is just gaming at its finest man.

Talked about this one on my podcast The Safe Room.

I don't mind the apparatus of this, but I do think it is poorly used here? Basically the trick of the mystery is just getting to the last run of clips, where Hannah explains the plot in entirety to you. You can do a lot of work to construct the mystery that the game ends up just doing for you. Could stand for more ambiguity.

I thought about Delores Claiborne (the novel specifically) a lot playing this, which does veer into horror briefly, but is ultimately mundane. Her Story is about women and police in only the most superficial ways. It can't really muster a systemic awareness or make that emotive. Claiborne has a scene were Delores goes to the bank to take out her daughter's college savings... only to find her husband has withdrawn them all. Her Story's direction is ultimately abstract and fairy-tale-like and it could far more biting mundanities.

i dunno, let's keep this quick. to say it's a bit clumsy is an understatement - and there are certainly aspects of the overall narrative i struggle with - but the depths of its sincerity won me over. i have no particular attachment to yakuza 7 either, and in fact i find much of that game to be very awkward, stilted, and grating so ultimately no one's more stunned than myself here.

when it's not luxuriating in this chilled-out ocean's twelve vibe which i loved, infinite wealth is written with far more intentionality and consideration than most entries in the series; while one might accuse of it of verging on threadbare or cloying for its strict emphasis on theme, i think the game trusts its audience to take some of the emotional leaps necessary to make the storytelling work. character writing for the leads and the party members has seen a dramatic improvement across the board. ichiban as usual brings a lot of levity to the table - thankfully none of it quite as irritating in the zany sense as 7 liked to employ - but kiryu's portions of the game are comparatively sobering. collecting memoirs has a weird psychological effect at times but the series has earned the right to do this by this point given how much of the kiryu saga can feel siloed or compartmentalized - in the same vein as gaiden, the game almost damns him for this, for never taking a chance to stop and reflect, for the consequences of his interminable martyr complex

that tendency to bury the past is only contrasted further by infinite wealth being maybe the most direct sequel the series has seen yet - the events of that game are still fresh in everyone's mind and sets the stage for the overarching conflict and everyone's investment in said conflict. it's a surprisingly natural extension of a lot of 7's themes, and i found it worked better for me this time. 7 often felt more gestural than anything else - to me it balanced far too much as this metaphorical (and literal) tearing down of the old ways, handling the introduction of a new protagonist, paying lipservice to series veterans and setting up parallels to the original ryu ga gotoku. infinite wealth to me feels more fully-formed, more confident; i think the team was able to use this title's unique hook and premise to really bring the most out of 7s promise of something new, and it could only have achieved it by taking the time to reflect on the past.

to this end: they made the game a JRPG this time, that counts for something. and not just a JRPG but one that feels as close to traditional RGG action as possible. some excellent systems this time with a lot of fascinating interplay and the level curve is fantastic. not necessary to sum up all the changes, you've seen them, but they really promote a lot of dynamic decision-making with respect to positioning and once you figure out how status effects can correlate with them you feel like your third eye's opening. very fond memories here of navigating around a crowd of enemies - some of whom have been put to sleep - and figuring out how best to maximize damage without waking anyone drowsy up. lots more strategy and enjoyment to be had here than pretty much anywhere in 7.

that said, i know RGG prides themselves on the statistics relating to players completing their titles, but they could really afford to take a few more risks with enemy waves in the main campaign. i felt like my most interesting encounters were usually street bosses or main story bosses, but the main campaign's filled with trash mobs. and i'm not saying every fight has to be some tactician's exercise - in fact i think that's the opposite of what people actually would enjoy - but i really wish the game took the time to play around even more with positioning. there are some exciting scenarios in the game that are too few and far in-between. stages that split up the party, encounters with unique mechanics...would really liked to have seen more in that vein.

some extra notes - would like to dig a bit deeper into the strengths of the narrative as well as some additional hangups but i can't be assed to write more
- honolulu's great, it gets probably a little too big for its own good but it's a real breath of fresh air for most of the game
- yamai is the best new character they've introduced in years
- dondoko island feels like a classic yakuza minigame in the best possible way, might even represent the apex of this kind of design. not obscenely grindy but just something casual and comfortable with enough layers to dig into without being overwheming and enough versatility to express yourself. shame you can't really say the same for sujimon!
- kiryu's party is disarmingly charming and they have some insanely good banter
- despite what some have said, i think this is a good follow-up to gaiden. it's not explicit about it but this is still very much a reckoning with kiryu's character and his mentality; it is every bit as concerned and preoccupied with the series mythos, the core ideas and conflicts driving a lot of installments
- honestly found the pacing to be on-par for the average RGG title if not better. i can concede that the dondoko island introduction was a bit too long but that is the most ground i can afford. if we can accept y5 into our hearts we can accept infinite wealth; IW makes y5 look deranged for its intrusiveness despite both titles occupying a similar length. if any of it registers as an actual problem, i think people would benefit from revisiting yakuza 7 to find it is almost exactly the same structurally if not worse
- IW is home to maybe the best needle drop in the medium
- played in japanese, like i usually do, so no real interest in commenting on the english dub since it's not real to me but i will say that what i listened to seemed like a bit of a step back from the dub quality in previous RGG games. yongyea isn't a convincing kiryu either and while i could be a bit more of a hater here all i will say is there is a STAGGERING whiplash involved in casting a guy like that as the lead in a game with themes like this. in a grouchier mood, i think it would genuinely be a bit difficult to look past this and it does leave me feeling sour, but ultimately the dub doesn't reflect my chosen means of engaging with the title and it never will
- what is difficult to look past is the game's DLC rollout, which arbitrarily gates higher difficulties, new game +, and a postgame dungeon. i acquired these through dubious means (which i highly recommend you also do) so i feel confident in saying they're really not at all worth the money unless you had a desire to spend more time in this world, but what a colossal and egregious failure to price it in this fashion. new game + specifically has tons of bizarre issues that make me believe a revision of some kind was necessary.
- you will not regret downloading this mod that removes the doors in dungeons


long story short, ryu ga gotoku's journey began in 2005 with a simple motif: to live is to not run away. so much of infinite wealth is about taking that notion to its furthest extent. it couldn't have possibly hit at a better time for me. at times it might be a classic case of this series biting off a bit more than it can chew for a sequel, but i don't think there's anything you can reliably point to that would make me think this is one step forwards, two steps back.

also awesome to have a game that posits that hawaii is filled with the fire monks from elden ring and then you have to travel to the resident evil 4 island to beat them up

i regret to inform all decent people of the world that this game is astonishingly good

Are you prepared to play the game? The dare's the only price of faaaaaaaame~ 🎡

Possibly the greatest crackshot rental I have ever had. Little did I know that during my wandering of those hollowed halls of that fabled local Blockbuster would result in me taking home quite possibly the greatest racing game ever known by my own two eyes. Captain Falcon's likeness on the cover beckoned me to come forth and play his game, a person who I had only known from punching Mario in the nose in some game involving smashing some brothers (DRAMATIZATION). How was I supposed to know he was the person behind the wheel of that blue car in that SNES game I played when I was like three years old? Unfortunately, I was most definitely not prepared to play the game.

After I threw that adorable little disc into my Gamecube, I was thrown into a twisting spiral of thrill going at the speed of sound threatening to somehow give me whiplash from the TV screen. With my new and now trusty Fire Stingray I became acquainted with the controls quickly, I leaned into those corners at Mute City as if they'd throw me from the seat if I didn't, and mashed the boost as much as I could upon my approach to the home stretch like some insane button pressing demon who loves pressing buttons. It wasn't until later I would find out about attacking other racers, and I would become a true heel of the circuit. Look out y'all, I'm comin' through! Get outta my way chumps! This doesn't even touch on other techniques I would learn such as snaking and flying like a damn jet aircraft. To this day, none can touch this.

Preparation in just the grand prix and practice could only do so much to prepare me for one of the greatest challenges I would encounter in this generation, the infamous story mode. The first few chapters? Not terrible, but then you get to your first true race and suddenly you realize just what kind of game you're truly in for. Chapter Seven is legendary amongst fellow racers who have experienced this mode. It's so well known that I capitalized it, as it deserves the distinguishment. The Story Mode Grand Prix race was insane and took me to my limit as a driver and put me on the brink of emotional breakdown, but in this world you've got to be strong. You've got to fight to keep your spirit alive. And you might feel like there is nothing left to go for and fight for, but it's the fight that keeps us ready and on guard!

I couldn't give up, I had to see the end! I needed to earn my happy ending. I had to channel Captain Falcon himself, I had to muster up driving ability that he would be proud of. I had to feel the power, see no fear, and feel no pain!

I've got power~ 🎡
I'm gonna fight to win~ 🎡
I'm gonna fiiiiiiiight to the eeeeeeend~ 🎡

Even I can feel the poooowerrrrr...when I think of him I see no feaaaaar....FEEL NO PAAAAIN!

MISSION CLEAR!

For a second I had thought I had lost yet again, but I in fact won by a hair! Hell yeah, fuck you Black Shadow, you goddamn loser. One of my proudest achievements growing up, after endless hours over my weekend! After this, the final showdown with the true mastermind of evil was a piece of cake. After all, we are Captain Falcon. The fight has indeed kept us ready for anything they could possibly throw at us. In this world I have become strong, and my spirit is alive and well. They didn't stand a chance, as I'm not just a dreamer and Falcon will forever be the hero.

What truly captivates me most however, is the amount of love and care that was given to everyone on the roster. All FORTY ONE of the drivers have their own bio, theme music and unlockable Tekken movie. These aren't simple theme songs either, we're talking actual lyrics and many different genres being represented. How do you get me to care about Jack Levin? By giving him the catchiest song in the game, I mean why wouldn't he? He's a former pop group member. I used to spend an unhealthy amount of time dancing along with the characters to their music in the profile section, I love how Bio Rex looked like he was swaying and thrashing out to his music.

Kid translation of Bio Rex lyrics:

DOOOOO OONYAAAAAGH! DAGH! NYAGH! OWAAGH NAGH! YYAAAAGH DAGH! MESMELIZE! DAAUGH NAUGH!
EEYAAAH! EEEYAH! DROP DA PRESSHUH!
EEEYAAAH! EEEYAH! DROP DA PRESSHUH!
EEEYAAH! EEEYAH! DROP DA PRESSHUH!
EEEYAAH! EEYAH! DROP DA PRESSHUUH!


EERRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! πŸ”₯ πŸ¦–

Hell, just last night at work I had Princia's chorus stuck in my head.

You're scared of the dark~🎡
Walk through the night~🎡
Give me your hand and let me take you through the night~🎡

You're scared of the dark~🎡
Walk through the streets~🎡
Give me your hand and I'll hold all the things you find~🎡

It's so good. I actually do really enjoy the cast, and it's pretty clear Nagoshi and the rest of AV had fun fleshing out the characters more. It's truly exceptional how the person who directed the first 3D racer I cared about would also be behind my favorite racing game ever. No one truly does racing as well as Sega. If there was one good thing that came about from Sega going third party, it's F-Zero GX. If there has to be an ending, I'm glad it's this. The only way you could one up GX is making the story mode a free roaming Yakuza-like with Falcon where you beat up Zoda goons, hang out at pubs getting pulled into illegal races, have a "Goroh Everywhere" mechanic where he constantly tries to challenge you to skeeball, texas hold'em, or darts, and meet up with the rest of the racers in crazy hijinx. One could dream, right? Even if it's all left in the past, he'll live through this masterpiece and forever he will be my hero....and now that I'm not just a dreamer....

Forever he will be my heeeeroooo~...🎡
and now that I'm not just a dreaaaaaameeeer~....🎡

Forever he will be my heeeeroooooo~....🎡
and now that I'm not just a dreaaaaameeeeerr~.....
🎡

The friends of Ringo Ishikawa was a game that took me back to my teenage years, viewed through the sobering & cynical lens of hindsight. The titular Ringo & his friends are a bunch of classic Japanese delinquents, with seemingly no initial higher ambitions beyond their schoolyard gang warfare, entering their final year as students with graduation on the horizon. Despite being a gaggle of petty thugs who smoke cigarettes & have seemingly little interest in their own futures, it's shown as the plot goes on that there's more to each of these delinquents than let's on. Your violent, dumb-as-rocks lackey Goro is a surprisingly talented thespian. Your number one brawler Ken has the talent necessary for a shot at a boxing career in college. Even Ringo himself is a shockingly erudite scholar with an interest in literature, a once-promising career in karate, and is a surprisingly idealistic, loyal, man of virtue. The one thing holding them back is their gang lifestyle & ideas, something that resonated with me as someone who saw this same situation play out dozens of times in my youth.

My own high school wasn't great looking back on it. Violence & abuse were common occurrences, drug use & sex in the hallways was an unspoken fact of life, and basically everyone was a minority of some kind from a low-income background. Lots of people I knew came from broken homes, or were working part-time to put food on the table, or were otherwise struggling with something no kid should've been dealing with at that age, the kind of things that can make studying for your history exam seem like small potatoes. It's a structural issue decades in the making that leads to people getting trapped in places like these, and unfortunately not everyone is able to escape it. Schoolyard fights that escalated into shootings. Football players who graduate with bright prospects only to then get arrested for murder. Kids akin to Ringo's gang members like Masaru or Goro, who have zero sights beyond the now & fully believe they'll be set for a life of petty crime after graduation. The short-sighted violent mindsets people box themselves into that end up spelling their own ends because they can't escape the circumstances that put them there.

I vividly remember hanging out in the parking lot after school one day, and I saw a kid reading a book on the hood of his car. His friends came up to him and immediately dogged on him for this and the supposed weakness such a hobby would project on your image, and he sheepishly put it away in his bag before he left with his friends. It's a small event in hindsight, but it was called back to my mind crystal clear during a scene where Ringo's friends rip into their fellow member Goro for his new vested interest in acting.

Ringo, for all his virtues, for all the books you can make him read, for all the training he can undergo, for all the studying & knowledge you can try to impart on him, still fully believes that his gang of schoolyard bullies is going to last forever, despite it being made rapidly apparent that everyone is starting to move on and find their own callings. Ringo still gets into casual street fights & latches onto his childish notions of schoolyard ethics, of "official challenges" and "rules," even as things spiral out of anyone's control & everyone starts to get in too deep. Much like some of my peers that I saw in my youth, he's a bright soul with potential and promise that is being squandered by his own adherence to violence and unhealthy group mentalities & expectations, and the simple fact is that as the days go by, everyone around him is starting to realize that they need to grow up and move past it all.

Everyone except him.

"It all returnifies to nutin it just keeps tumblirzing dewn, tumblirzing dewn, tumblirzing dewn"

Word of warning I'm attaching some files to this review so you can have a glimpse at how utterly weird this game is. The audio might be fucked up because it hurt my ears so much I had to tone it down as much as I could while I played it. Papa can't lose his noise peepers.

Yeah I have no fucking clue what they were cooking with this. If you ever played Slayers X, imagine that but non functional. Too weird to be taken seriously, too rare to dissapear from the gamer zeitgeist. Multiple times something so weird and stupid happened to me while I was playing I had to second look around me ingame just to be sure I was not hallucinating.
Everything in this beast of a game is designed to either gross you out or make you desperately angry. Buy the ticket, take the ride as they say. The enemy design for the most part is lackluster, with all save for one of them being hitscanners with the same arsenal as you. Special shout out to the bosses being completely incomprehensible. Yes, the things accompanying him are turds. The game expects of you almost complete devotion, punishing you in the most bizarre ways possible if you aren't actively consuming it's crack-based content. You'll be blown to bits by a type of cosmic stupidity fuelled by bothyour own hubris and the developer's.
Did I mention the game also has platforming? On the build engine floatiness, no less.

But even so I find myself thinking...that that was a really cool fps! Definetely not the best Build Engine one, but completely able to perform on the same level of entertainment as Shadow Warrior or Duke Nukem. Everything is there, with "gorgeous" levels that tend to feel close to life and the perfect amount of grease and doodoo. When the going gets good, you can totally get an enjoyable, if deeply weird experience or downright comically painful punishment for not acting like an imbecile alongside it thanks to the atmosphere, straight out of Corona and sound design it has, half maddening screaming and cursing with ear blasting guns and half psychobilly soundtrack with Mojo Nixon and Reverend Horton Heat among others shooting it out the park with some really good hollerings and general crassness. Mojo really left himself go with the original stuff he wrote for the game, absolute psycho shit ranting. Mc Donalds can kiss my butt. I'll forever be thankful for the game for letting me hear Dick talk about something profoundly weird and obscene while shit and farm animals explode everywhere.

A weird beast off a build engine FPS absolutely not made for human consumption yet painfully fun, clearly made with love and a respect for the sources ( RIP Dick Montana ). I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, shit and all and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone who wants to feel weird for a couple of hours.

just a casual update on this. prior to the game's newly implemented master rate update - which introduced ELO as a separate, zero-sum figure which factored into matchmaking and more clearly delineated skill in players - a charitable interpretation of the game's ranking system would be as an extension of the game's thesis, the idea that the journey for strength is never-ending. and there was certainly an appeal to that: now that you've reached master rank, you'll have to duke it out with every other person who put in the time and managed to make it to the top.

on a mechanical level, though, this felt tangential at best, and over time would likely only result in an increasingly lopsided system where most players had managed to get into master rank just by playing the game over a long enough stretch of time. having master rate now lends each and every battle this genuine tension & palpable weight. after all, nobody wants to be at the bottom of that leaderboard. nakayama's team designed sf6 with the notion that the versus mode is philosophically endgame content, a mode that, for absolute newcomers, should best be reserved until after the completion of world tour and some additional reps in practice. with this in mind, master rate goes beyond just 'endgame' content - it feels like a high level expansion where you're invited to prove your salt.

for my part, i've enjoyed two brief stints in the top 25 north american dhalsims, although as it turns out the mantle is hard to keep (as of writing: #45). is it impressive? i dunno, i feel like i have a lot more to learn and my character is underplayed by a margin of almost 200,000 players (as of august 14, there were around 221824 ken users. this is to be contrasted against a paltry 29183 dhalsim users). im not actually really a competitor in the FGC, but id like to keep growing stronger and keep fighting strong opponents. so i dunno, we'll see where this goes.

it's a significant motivator, then, that this is probably my favourite street fighter at this point, as well as probably my favourite fighting game. not to say that this is without fault - i appreciate world tour's inclusion immensely but it's half-cooked, the in-game economy leaves something to be desired, battle passes suck and the devs need to do more to encourage casual retention (further costumes is one thing but what about alternative winscreens, a functional music player, further customization of titles and versus screens, etc), matchmaking needs to be further expanded to utilize the game's strong netcode (why am i somewhat region locked), and no, you're not imagining things, the game's input register really is kind of wacky.

but i think a lot of other complaints at the moment stem from the amplification of certain voices on social media - as well as the fact that these people are also vying for a million dollars in the capcom pro tour and need things to resolve in their favour. so if we can learn to accept third strike as one of the apexes of this genre, a game constructed around problems with no clear, safe answers, a game where half of the normals kind of feel like shit, a game where chun li and yun and ken and all manners of bullshit are allowed to run rampant and free, then we can accept sf6 as a similar work in progress too. an evolving slate, one in which we have to learn - with time - to deal with strong characters and strong universal systems and strong offensive options.

this game really hits this absolute sweet spot of accessibility and depth of systems without presenting straightforward or clear solutions in a way that gets my brow furrowed in concentration and my brain eager to keep playing. i come from a samurai shodown background so everything to do with this central notion of not going on autopilot and guarding against the tendencies of players, in a sense moreso than worrying about the characters they inhabit, strikes a resonant chord with me. im really excited to see where it goes, and of course it goes without saying EVO top 8 this year belongs in the pantheon of fighting game tournaments. just a total gem. thank you capcom for giving me aki on my birthday

addendum: KB0 third strike review, november 2020:
"rather than establishing new legends, this game is about characters unsure about what the future entails, about what their next move should be, about what it even means to continue fighting - they waver, they fail, they practice, they move on. "

what a joy, then, that this is the overarching idea that propels world tour! street fighter has never really had traditionally good narratives, but when it chooses to it has pretty good vignettes and pretty good character writing, both of which world tour thankfully has in spades. very smart to organize a narrative around each character kind of just doing their own thing instead of trying to wrap them all into a sweeping narrative ala SFV.

Essential weird-y2k-invader-zim-full-zip-hoodie-tripp-pants-kingdom-hearts-depop-core. Looks like Salad Fingers mixed with Shadow Hearts mixed with EB Games by Walmart 19.99 section. If this actually scans to you, congrats you have BPD, welcome to the elite.

bitch youuuuuuu are a stranger. this broader aesthetic sense of making art thats like an overtly long talk therapy session with some two faced white woman is becoming maddening to me. i dont think its appropriate to belabor this because the "quiz" here is such a harmless & secondary example of it, and maybe is more self-aware than im pinning it, but also i had a pretty stark realization in here that i've heard this exact voice, story, talk, expression, diction, & conclusion more times than i ever thought possible. u kno both folks here probably said "power differential" 1 too many times in the relationship. forgive me but i gotta talk my shit for a minute: yall's own self-admitted lack of agency & disproptional reactivity dont bother yall?????? self-pitying shit is as much of a power play as anything else u woulda known that if you were up on ur nietzsche by now. might as well let ur fucking nuts hang & make art and say shit about what you would do if you had things your way instead of what would you woulda done were you the perfect lil tweebell them PhDs is tryna get you to be. like the final conclusion here is an overtly self-conscious epigraph about how being too self-conscious is bad. you bitches need an intervention!!! i may be a broke ass bitch ass nigga but trust that rapping along with pap when he goes "hunnid on me...these bitch ass broke ass niggas better not say nothing to me" prepares me to tackle life's problems more than anything coming from this lane. maybe im a sociopath and got a impaired sense of empathy & dont get it but also ian seen nary a post or analysis or even a interpretative lens that would reward deeper investigation of smthn that got this "autoethnography" or whatever stench on it. another big whiff from itch.io 4 me.