31 reviews liked by Gelatart


Gaming’s greatest commentary on capitalist alienation. A story of a man driven to extreme lengths by his shitty fast food job, desperately trying to find any form of community as capitalism erases it.

Nothing gets me going then playing a supremely mediocre fantasy game only to find out that my magic is powered by Skittles and that this is the most straight faced nightmarish advergame. I can say however that it is in fact a game.

I don't know what to score this game, obviously such a nightmare but I'm so glad it exists. In some ways these are my favourite games, just complete freakshows. Total Frankenstein's monster games that have been given a few too many bolts of electricity to their dead, beating hearts. I played almost all the way through this w a friend one time, using save states and a walkthrough to get around it's absolute unplayability. And there was only one walkthrough we could find online, and midway through the guy writing had just given up and written "sorry I can't do this anymore". Like it was a suicide note or something. I mean, that has to count for something. Gamers will famously swallow a lotta bullshit but this one may be true kryptonite. Love it.

How in the HELL did this release in the state it did when we have perfectly functional ports already available on PC? You are essentially paying $30 for a "fresher" online community and Xbox DLC you could have modded in, yourself.

Netcode is terrible, hits do not register as they should. PTP servers do not work. Aspyr's servers crash all the time. No online support for split-screen modes and lacking crossplay when these games and community really needed it. Utter trash and I would have this refunded in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact this was a birthday gift from a friend and he has to authorize the refund.

A graphical showcase for sure but after a while just makes me feel like I'm playing Far Cry again. In the way that enemies are pretty easy, content variety is sparse, and it becomes a slug to do anything but the main missions.

Fun enough for co-op though.

This is a solid game. Good ideas, good execution. The combat is a little stiff, and the camera problematic, but nothing that destroys the experience. A good action RPG.

An outstanding remake of a game that, if you asked me a year ago, I would have told you didn't need a remake. Dead Space isn't like Resident Evil 2 where the original was a ps1 survival horror that would push most modern players away in it's opening minutes. No, Dead Space is a game that you can puchase on Steam and largely feels pretty modern to this day; so how do you successfully remake it?

The answer is by adding... more. There's more story, a completely re-written script that overhauls character arcs and makes every character much more pertinent in the story, as well as adding voice acting to isaac, making him feel like he's actually participating in the story. There's more gameplay, the zero-g segments have been expanded and redesigned to better fit the later entries in the series, and the ishimura now allows you to go back wherever you like, whenever you like, and by giving you security passes as the game goes on it adds a metroidvania-esque element to exploration. It even has more of the great art design that the first boasted (though of course, like the gameplay, it's not on the level of the sequel).

And what does all of this 'more' result in? This is easily THE way to play Dead Space, and considering that it comes with the second game, which is my favorite game of all time, you can't lose! I just hope that this works as a good proof of relevance and EA let's them make an all-new Dead Space.

If you want to know more of my thoughts check out my review video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qqPVNoEYkg&ab_channel=PCGamer

As the only clown on this website who has played the whole game (in one sitting right at release to secure a free Pickle Rick back bling in Fortnite), I can say with confidence High on Life is dreadfully weak. And that's a bit of a shame since it theoretically has good bones.

The most glaring problem is, of course, the dialogue. The pre-release comparison to Borderlands 3 is apt as characters literally do not cease their oral spew, and you are forced to listen to them before you can progress at key points. Borderlands has ameliorated this in part with the ECHOnet transmissions, keeping you apprised of plot elements as you messed about on Pandora. Save for key story moments, the dialogue therein is accompanied by your mad dash for loot and slaughter. High on Life quivers in its boots at the mere thought that you might miss a single phoneme. There is no means to skip dialogue. There is no opportunity to play the game when characters are talking. If you are not physically glued in place, you are locked in a distraction-less room. And should you dare to break from the tedium of a suburban hardwood floor and off-white walls by heading upstairs, you are scolded by your guns to pay attention. In a properly written, compelling narrative this would be fine, but a substantial chunk of the game is NPCs yammering incessantly. Fake arguments become auditory static, the white noise penetrated only by mention of racism, misogyny, or a cavalcade of 'fuck's. Does a holstered gun have something to say? Worry not, they'll speak to you over radio. That there is so much dialogue is rather interesting in and of itself, particularly seeing how your different weaponry will engage in conversations with NPCs, but there is not a moment where speech is not occurring. The only moment of respite is if you stay in place.

And some of the writing is passable, some even bordering on good. But it never comes out of Justin Roiland's many mouths. The closest I came to cracking a smile was when Zach Hadel, Michael Cusack, Rich Evans, Jay Bauman, Mike Stoklasa, or Tom Kenny was the focus. In a vacuum, some of their witticisms might have earned a chuckle or at least a considered exhale, but these moments are paltry oases after being duped by an infinitude of mirages. You know in your bones that a joke will not be allowed to stand on its own, and that Roiland or his other hack voice 'actors' will need to get their own two cents in. It is a Reddit comment thread not only in content, but in presentation, someone always retelling the above poster's joke but worse. In Roiland's world, stuttering is a feature, not a bug. His stammering makes Porky Pig seem eloquent. A one-take wonder.

"Is the gameplay good?" This question was asked more times than I can count during my marathon. As I emphatically repeated there, "no." There's a weightlessness to every second of combat that betrays the animations and premise of your guns being living things. There is more weight, more oomph, more impact to Spore's creature stage combat than there is to this gunplay. Your bullets genuinely feel as if they are lobbed foam balls. The only times at which there is some punch is when detonating sigh Sweezy's crystals with her charge shot. I can't tell if it's all a consequence of your enemies being shrouded in goop or not. Your shots take away the goop to expose their regular flesh, but this somehow imparts little feedback. Is it because there is so much flash and bedlam occurring that I can't even tell where and when my shots are landing? I have no idea. At the very least the juggling of enemies is semi-novel (even if it comes after Kenny begs lustfully for me to use his 'Trickhole'), and Creature is semi-satisfying if only because you can launch his children and go find a quiet[er] corner to recuperate mentally in. You get some basic manoeuvrability upgrade which makes this a Metr- Search Action game in some sense when coupled with returning to planets to find extra cash. You can upgrade your weapons and unlock modifiers for them but the changes are so minute I couldn't really tell how much of an impact they were having. What the mods do do is change the colour of your weapons. Given that so much of your screen real estate is occupied by their "beautiful dick-sucking lip" visages, this is the most substantial alteration you can make.

The music is like Temporary Secretary by Paul McCartney but bad.

Visually there is something of value here (in theory). While many of the alien inhabitants blend together with their amorphous sausage anatomies, the unique NPCs typically bear striking designs. Sweezy notwithstanding, the guns are cute as well, even if I feel Kenny is perpetually doing the Dreamworks smirk. Kenny and Gus' iron sights are adorable, and the way Gus clamps onto your hand indoors melts my heart. Creature reminds me of that Skylander that had the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Inoffensive! Until you see his actual full model and you realise he has three tits and a prolapsed anus for a barrel. And Gus looks like he has a turtle's cock.

Errant thoughts:

Boy howdy is there a lot of mpreg talk.

One of the scenes you can warp in is a movie theatre where you can watch all of Demon Wind with the RLM crew. That would be okay but I don't think the MST3K style commentary works for a film that belongs in a Best of the Worst episode. There's a reason why they show you fragments of them watching it, and why their film commentaries are for more compelling films.

There is so much overlapping of dialogue that I genuinely got a headache that intensified over the game. A horror during a Tylenol shortage in Canada.

I put more effort into gathering my thoughts than they did making this shit.

I wish that I had always been in a grave.

There's a lot to like about Pitfall, but most of its appeal has less to do with its design and more to do with the fact that its aesthetics look more modern than most 2600 games. The animations are smooth, the sprites are clear, the setting is iconic.

I try to rate games (and movies, shameless letterboxd plug) contextually, so I can't be too mad at Pitfall's very era-appropriate design. However, I would say that Adventure proved 3 years before this that adventure games could have more interesting objectives. But Adventure also looks like barf compared to Pitfall, so it was all trade-offs I guess. If anyone has any solid 2600 games that really pushed boundaries, let me know.

To sum up my experience with Pitfall: after fiddling around, dying, and resetting for 10 minutes, I finally found my first piece of treasure, and then was immediately swallowed up by a surprise pit and lost my last life. C'est la vie!

i genuinely think it would be a better world if more narrative-driven interpersonal adventure games adopted LSL:MCM's Undertale-esque bullet hell conversation minigame at the bottom of the screen where you're a little cartoon spermatozoon dodging obstacles and every time you hit one during an interaction with a hot babe you burp fart or jizz

2 lists liked by Gelatart