Superliminal offers some technical clever puzzle solving that only ever gets cuter as things progress, but while there’s nothing exceptionally off-putting about the game, it seems sort of a waste that half of the included puzzles are merely about constructing increasingly annoying staircases.

While the presentation style of Superliminal is pretty derivative of genre contemporaries, the atmosphere is nice, and the runtime is brisk enough that no part outstays it’s welcome here.

Lies of P is the latest in the small handful of this genre of games that I've buckled up and really decided to dive into, joining titles like Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and the original Dark Souls.

The inspirations of the twink Pinocchio game are tattooed up and down on two beefy roided up arms, adorned yet unimpeded by a sleeveless jean jacket that has "HAVE YOU PLAYED DARK SOULS YET" embroidered on the back, which may be a point of irritation or eye rolling to some. But, i don't know. Lies of P kind of feels like If Dark Souls Was Fun?
Or for a less inflammatory slogan, Dark Souls Without The Fat.

Lies of P's level design and structure, whether out of necessity of budget or pure design, feels positively brisk and focused. There's not a lot of pointless meandering to be had, and there's basically nothing in the entire game that felt needlessly cruel to me, which I thought would have been the M.O. for most of these soulslike games based on my limited familiarity with FromSoftware. It's really refreshing how the game's structure is clearly telegraphed with things like chapter numbers and enough narrative to sort of manage the pace of the adventure and help avoid it ever feeling suffocating or overly daunting to the point of being unengaging altogether.

Going into Lies of P, I was admittedly expecting something that was much more of a slog to get through, something to find the path of least resistance through and go "oh yeah ok that was fine" and be done with it. But the sheer freedom of playstyles, approaches, and actually-meaningful progression kept my focus locked in throughout my time playing. At no point did I feel I ever had to cheese the system and abuse obtuse mechanics to win, nor did I even feel like I could had I wanted to.

For the first half of the game I stuck with my starting weapon, in this case the rapier, not out of "this is the best approach" obligation, but just because of how much fun I had using it. Watching gameplay clips of others showed me how drastically I had played not just individual boss fights, but the entire game itself. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I perfectly blocked or parried an attack on purpose: Not for lack of execution, but more for lack of feeling like I needed to, or that it was The Way You Have To Do It.

Bonfire locations are placed thoughtfully and were seldom frustrating, and your Pinocchio Souls being dropped outside of the boss room felt far more. Sensible? than what I was expecting. In a lot of ways Lies of P was easier in difficulty than either Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (At Jedi Master difficulty) or certainly Dark Souls itself - God knows I was only ever really frustrated at one fight (That wasn't even a proper boss to boot) but this decreased difficulty honestly did nothing to lessen my engagement or sense of reward and self satisfaction. It actually felt more satisfying to be playing a game that felt like it wanted me to keep playing it while also being completely reasonable.

There's a lot to appreciate here when it comes to the minute systems details, and surprisingly, things like the setting, themes and music, which I was also prepared to completely write off but ending up being way more engrossed in than anyone could take me seriously for, so for the sake of not ballooning this blog post any further, I'll leave it at that.

I haven't jumped into NG+ yet, but Lies of P is one of the incredibly few games I've ever actually considered doing it for.

Hitman III ups the production values just a little bit more than it's predecessor, and while the total level suite may not be a strict improvement over Hitman II's (Is there anything as good as the F1 Race in Florida?), they are certainly up to par in scope and replay-ability with most of the previous entries, and feature even more unique story mission tidbits.

While the narrative of these game's is by far the thing that least catches my interest in these games, I was surprised by the end how invested I was - Honestly, still really not a whole lot, but more than I would have expected.

At the end of the day, Hitman III is another top notch billionaire killing simulator in which you play as the world's funniest assassin. There's not a whole lot more you could ask for here.

A more successful implementation of proximity voice chat has not existed before, and may not exist for some time, if ever.

Lethal Company's easy to understand and instantly clever gameplay loops are so strong and addictive that it carries a perfectly satisfying but small amount of bespoke assets and mechanics on its back without breaking a sweat with nearly 60 hours of game time spread across a little over a month logged in my personal steam library, with new features still being developed and added in concurrent to this review.

Mechanically, Mortal Kombat 1 is the most satisfying feeling entry from Netherrealm Studios in some time. I lack the skill, experience, or vocabulary to really articulate it or fully appreciate it, but it just feels good. While playing the NRS titles, I've never really been privy to any of the animation issues that other seem to have, instead only being able to really understand the gripes people have when watching back footage. For most of the cast of characters, it's been even more difficult for me to spot the "jank" present in NRS's animation style - Except for Johnny Cage. Holy shit do Johnny Cage's animations look ridiculous.

But whatever, I don't really play these games for their refined combat. I've pretty much bought every NRS title since 2011's franchise reboot on day 1 for their substantial story modes. Going into Mortal Kombat 1, I was very excited at what seemed like a real refresh for the franchise in many of the characters' designs and origins. I was particularly stoked that for once in these games, all of these experts in various Asian martial arts were themselves depicted as Asian martial artists. I was also stoked at the lack of any of those military special forces guns, grenades, and drones bullshit.

The story mode starts off fairly promising with this return to form about being a game steeped in martial arts and mysticism film pastiches, but this quickly grinds to a screeching halt and devolves into modern day superhero movie junk. Despite being marketed as a fresh start, Mortal Kombat 1 seems intent on not being able to let go from the timeline fuckery story elements from Mortal Kombat 11. Not only does this game do it worse than 2019's entry, but it also serves to diminish any unique identity either game has.

I'm not asking for anything Shakespearean in quality here and fully expect Mortal Kombat to always essentially be about smashing ninja toys together, but it feels like the developers just lost focus or lost confidence in their own storytelling and resorted to essentially making a shitty Boss Logic caliber CG movie.

If I truly had my unreasonable, zero-dollar making way, a story revolving around the first Mortal Kombat tournament, Goro, and The Great Kung Lao in addition to a cast of mostly new faces would have been the most compelling path this latest time reset could have led us. Unrealistic, for sure, but man to swing so hard the other way was a big disappointment.

Oh well, here's hoping next time around is better.

Like with most games of excessive scope and scale there are probably a number of things you could nitpick or criticize about Starfield, but none of those really matter, and it is a waste of time to ponder on them.

Would Starfield be better had there been 100, 50, or 10 planets instead of 1000+? No.

Would seamless loading screens masked by intra-atmospheric space travel make Starfield an instant 10 out of 10? I seriously doubt it.

The want for space aliens a la Mass Effect is uninspired and refusing to engage with the game on the same level as wishing for a burger at a Chinese restaurant, and while ground vehicles inspired by their implementation in something like Halo would be nice, like everything else that Starfield does competently, it would be squandered thanks to Bethesda's enduring ability to design a game that ultimately feels utterly pointless.

Paradoxically, Bethesda Game Studios has mastered the art of creating huge simulation sandbox playgrounds where you can do pretty much everything, but you can't do anything that matters.

Systems-wise, you are granted a fair amount of agency, I guess. Like, on a technical level. But despite the hundreds of characters and a volume of voice acted dialogue larger than the studio's last 2 major efforts combined, Starfield manages to be a roleplaying game in which you are not allowed to roleplay. There are rarely any big decisions to make, and when you do make a decision, rarely does it have big consequences.

Starfield pales in comparison in this department compared to the aforementioned Mass Effect, as well as The Outer Worlds, or even something like Arkane's Prey: There's no build up to looming forks in which you can shape the destiny of your player character or other NPCs, there's a drought of alternate quest win conditions or exclusive quests that lock you in to their paths, you can't deal with major NPCs by blasting the problem away and collecting a key item in their place, and aside from a generic type of fetch quest, there are no time gated decisions that ask the player to take some responsibility for themselves or the world around them.

No, even in this new dangerous frontier of space pioneers, the most common form of real moment to moment player agency is on occasion being able to pass dialogue checks with NPCs to persuade them instead of having to fight them - A system so frivolous and unincorporated with anything else happening in the game that you can cheese the system by constantly reloading a save until they decide they agree with you this time based off of a die roll - or choosing to sneak around an abandoned factory instead of charging in gung ho, guns blazing.

I feel like I'm not asking for a lot here; Or at least, what I am asking for at the bare minimum shouldn't be limited by the scope of the rest of the game. I don't believe that less planets or less polished gun mechanics or scrapping the base building would suddenly imbue this game with the personality and venue for player expression that it sorely needs.

If anything, customizing guns, having functionally endless planets to choose from to build a base on, and especially the ship customization feature are the things that allow for the most player expression in Starfield, with the last of those being my main motivation for progressing through the game, and remains my favorite aspect of it.

Something as basic as being locked out of factions for mingling with others, or some scale of "Good Guy Points/Bad Guy Points" would have gone a long way here. Giving the player multiple dialogue options with different tones and personalities even, would have gone a long way here. I wouldn't even ask that they always have different responses, so long as there's at least a convincing facade of enabling player expression at play.

Starfield is an unreasonably huge game that actually manages to pull off what it says on the tin. The gun fighting feels pretty good in a noticeable step-up from Fallout 4, the "NASApunk" visual language despite sounding antithetical to either NASA or punk is very cool and effective. You can fly ships, build a base, blah blah blah.

Although it could easily have been worse, there's no point in rewarding an accolade for surface level competency. And I really do mean surface level. None of these systems have that much depth or complexity to them, which is perfectly fine. Unfortunately, there is no real external motivation for engaging with these systems to make up for it.

There's just no reason to give a damn about Starfield.

The loudest thought in my head has consistently been that, regardless of how good Morrowind is or isn't, the idea that any of it's more talked about criticisms about being slow, clunky, or baffling in other ways is due to its age, or is a product of some kind of age of video game antiquity, simply holds absolutely no water.

You can split hairs about what it means for a game to "age", if it even does, but most of the time, that's a fruitless game of semantics. However, at the same time, I feel it does a disservice to Morrowind in particular to hand-wave away these criticisms in the name of “Well, 2002 was a different time”; In addition to somewhat undermining the game’s own positive achievements as being merely “Really good, for, y’know, back then.” this mentality I feel ignores the actual history and greater context of the genre, or even The Elder Scrolls franchise itself.

Movement is slow, which I’ve heard has to do with making the game world feel bigger. Yet, the game world isn’t even that small land-mass wise, certainly and especially in the context of 2002 video games. And in Morrowind’s own Daggerfall movement is just fine despite fast traveling to every point of interest literally being a requirement in that game. There are things like potions or spells or enchanted items that can aid with movement speed, but when it starts to feel like investment in those is necessary to

What does feel… Well, “Small” might not be the best word, but “Limited”, is the actual range of emotions the landscapes evoke. Morrowind’s excellent art direction shines and is arguably enhanced by the graphical capabilities of the platform(s) at the time, and yet so much of that feels lost in the tedious stretches between destinations. I’ve often heard praise of Morrowind’s unique and alienating setting, but so much of it in reality is simply dull. I take no issue with the idea of empty atmospheric expanses in games, but there are so many monotonous game mechanics or lack of engaging ones to make those few moments of immersive atmosphere last an entire play-through. Cliff-Racers live up to their internet reputation as the most annoying enemies to deal with in video games, period. Many of the incidental quests you may stumble upon on your journeys around Morrowind are equally inconsequential and un-fun. The most rewarding parts of exploration are simply when you finally reach somewhere that’s a slightly different shade of brown-grey until another unrelenting horde of Cliff-Racers spawn, or you’re forced to deal with endless Slaughterfish while swimming.

To compound all of this, the world of Morrowind is set to a looping soundtrack of just a handful of songs removed from any context or artful placement that I was able to pick up on outside of the battle theme. The theme from Morrowind has sort of gone on to become the theme tune for the franchise as a whole, but I couldn’t help throughout my entire playthrough thinking that the Daggerfall, and somewhat by extension even the Arena soundtracks easily did laps around Morrowind in their sleep.

I like to think that I have a propensity for being able to take in the moments and the environments around me in video games, and often my favorite environments are ones that feel isolating, hostile, and unfamiliar, so I can confidently say my lack of patience with Morrowind’s world likely stems from a number of other external factors at play. I think one of these factors is the strained player agency throughout the rest of the game. In the context of a Morrowind review, that’s probably an insane sentence to read if you’re enthusiastic about the game, but I truly felt more limited in what I could do or who I could be than in either its predecessor, Daggerfall, or its later 2 successors, Oblivion and Skyrim. Outside of the Elder Scrolls franchise and around the same time, I also felt my agency being more strained than in a game like Knights of The Old Republic, which, to me, seems to be the grand point of all of these games.

To clarify, Morrowind technically gives you a sandbox of tools to do crazy stuff like leap across the continent in a single bound, a feat none of these other entries boast. In place of being able to climb on walls, it seems crafting flight spells and being able to use them in a variety of creative ways in particular is one of the big “You can only do this in Morrowind type things I regularly came across in my playthrough . This is neat, but doesn’t really make up for the rest of what is ultimately a narrow experience - I have never before in any RPG failed to make a character that actually felt… decent to play as, as many times as I have with Morrowind. Upon character creation there are a small variety of skills and birth signs you can take to mold and influence how you will play the game, and yet the actual array of starting stats and skills that are actually viable for the first few levels is so small that it makes me question why the game lets me do this in the first place as opposed to offering a few preset arrays. This is such a problem with this game that there are no shortage of guides or forum posts out there that exist solely to seek or supply help for simply being able to play the game in the first place. I don’t remember exactly how many characters I had to make before I was able to reliably kill one or two of the starting area monsters without getting killed, but compared to the… One attempt in Daggerfall I made without a guide, it felt like a silly waste of my time. I think there is an art to being able to fuck up your character sheet, but it shouldn’t be easier to fuck it up so consistently than it is to make something not even great - Just baseline playable.

Some of this is amplified by the feedback of combat in general just being shit - How you reconcile tacking on dice rolls to a real-time action game without having robust animations or sound design is beyond me, but again, this is something that I didn’t really struggle with all that much in Daggerfall, going to show that this sort of thing isn’t “bad because it’s old”, it’s just… Bad. Up until this point, Bethesda had done better.

There are plenty of other sore areas or instances to be found in Morrowind, some of the most frustrating being losing hours of progress to Brown Rot, a mechanic the game hadn’t properly warned me about or prepared me for, or the layout of Vivec city being so pointlessly confusing that even the in-game NPCS comment on it, but these are just incidental dogshit moments that are more nitpicks that are amplified with bigger issues found in the game, or are only caused by said bigger issues to begin with.

Attempting to stay on track just a little bit with the idea of limited player agency is the near complete absence of any roleplaying. Sure, there’s no shortage of dialogue options with every NPC in the game, the world is populated with plenty of quests and factions to join up with, and the lore/setting are interesting, but none of the dialogue really allows you to approach situations in different ways, and the vast majority of NPC dialogue are generic lines that are seldom actually useful when you really want them to be, for as much as this game is about reading the information and acting on it instead of mindlessly following markers on your HUD. The quests and factions themselves are also very one note, repetitive, and involve very little in the way of story or narrative flair. While the world-building of the game makes for cool youtube videos to listen to on another tab while working, it unfortunately doesn’t seem to inform too much of what you can actually do in-game. I keep reading that entering family tombs and disturbing them is strictly forbidden by law in the region of Morrowind, and yet I still don’t know firsthand what the consequences of that really are. I’ve killed handfuls of slavers and have freed their captives, but I haven’t really faced any consequences for that, nor have I really been able to follow up on the liberated NPCs.

It’s as though in Morrowind there are so many different things you can technically do, and yet it rarely feels as though I’m doing something different, one moment to the next. There’s no reactivity or drama to really sell the agency that the game chooses to afford you. It all makes for a really underwhelming messiah story. I immediately played Starfield upon its release after my time with Morrowind, and while I have yet to write that particular review, I’m coming to realize that this idea of breadth over depth is not a new concept for Bethesda.

But perhaps Morrowind needn’t be all that deep. While less complex than Daggerfall, I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that Daggerfall is deeper. The story, quests, dialogue, and reactivity are basically at the same level as Morrowind’s, but I’m able to accept that as there are in general less gameplay annoyances, and its focus on being a medieval fantasy life simulator seems more clearly realized. I don’t really know what Morrowind is supposed to be good at; Its greatest strength is its art direction, but that hardly makes a great game.

Maybe the leap to a 3D modeled world from 2D sprites was too big of a technical challenge on a financially strained studio on the verge of closing? There are seeds planted in this game not present in Daggerfall that you can see blossom in later entries, and there are improvements from Daggerfall, with the vastly simplified dungeon layouts that, for the better, don’t feel ripped out of someone’s basement game of Dungeons & Dragons circa 1983 and go on forever.
The main quest does have a slight bit more going on mechanically every now and then compared to the many sidequests of the world, which also could not really be said of Daggerfall.

For the sake of evaluating this game on its own, and experiencing the game as it was intended to be experienced on release, I had originally set out to not yet play any of the DLC, and still have yet to really dive into any of it. However, I did manage to wander onto a DLC island and was treated to my favorite quest in the game - A sidequest where you have to promptly memorize lines to a play happening in a shopping center square, only for some slightly off-color political joke to go off the rails and incite being attacked by some extremist audience member. For Morrowind, this was a really inventive and tightly paced quest that felt cleverly written and utilized the game’s text-only dialogue system as a core mechanic that was fun to engage with. This was one of the few times I had a stupid grin on my face because of something that the game did. One of the others, also found on this DLC island, was being able to have a pet rat that doubled as a beast of burden.

This review of Morrowind probably contains the word “Daggerfall” way more than it should, but I think that if it's impossible to evaluate this game without some greater context, it should be in an actual context of its contemporaries and predecessors and not some vague “long time ago”, as if video games before the year 2007 are simply “too old” to be accessible by modern audiences. These contemporaries and predecessors, in addition to the faint whiffs of Morrowind’s own DLC to me show that a better game was absolutely within reach in 2002. Morrowind carries with it just enough charm to be a memorable experience that despite my nonstop whinging, I did in fact enjoy an OK amount. Its mountain of shortcomings were simply too much of a hindrance for me to love it, which is regrettable.

One of the stranger American English phrases I have noticed that seems to exclusive to a certain pocket of Gen-X'ers and Millenials is the rhetorical question, "Am I being Punk'd right now?"

I'm entirely certain the first time I heard this phrase used in this way was in the 2007 film Transformers, directed by Michael Bay. As a 9 year old at the time, even I thought that was a weird cultural reference to make. I had both seen Ashtons Kutcher’s Punk'd on TV before, and could most probably identify Ashton Kutcher in a lineup if you had asked me to at the time, and yet it still stood out to me like a sore thumb. I admit I have only seen Transformers twice - Once on a pirated-and-edited-for-my-mormon-neighbor DVD, and once again on a roadtrip on one of those headrest mounted displays in my mom’s SUV. I may be misremembering this gag, or even inventing it entirely. I think the joke was that referencing Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d , even in 2007, was a clumsy attempt at seeming cool, snappy, and in tune with the younger generation was inherently a goofy thing that only old people like Shia LeBouf’s white haired professor would do. This was my first recollection of the phrase “Am I being Punk’d right now?”/”Are you Punk’d-ing me right now?”/”I totally thought you were Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d-ing us”/etc.” being used outside of the context of an actual episode of Punk’d, and since then I have kept track of more or less every time someone else has invoked the cultural touchstone that is Mr. Kutcher’s incredibly famous and popular prank show. On 4 separate occasions, 2 of them being from my mom, someone has rhetorically asked me if there were hidden cameras recording them in exasperation over the absurdity of whatever was happening in that instant. All 4 of those times, it came from someone older than be by at least one generational label, if not two. All 4 of those times, I could not resist but be possessed by my inner mean spirit, and would poke fun at the use of such a reference.

But, perhaps, I am nothing if not my mom’s child.

“Am I Getting Punk’d Right Now?” an internal monologue rushed to the forefront of my conscience to shout, as the McDonald’s employee walked up to my car window literally less than 10 seconds from when I had pulled into the mobile order pickup parking spot and tapped “Here” in the McDonald’s app to confirm that I had arrived to The Grimace’s birthday celebration.

Stunned by the sheer speed at which the kind worker had thrust the intoxicatingly purple milkshake and neatly presented brown and red bag containing one medium order of fries and a big mac into my hands, I barely had the time to process the social transaction, nor can I recollect the event in any detail beyond this. I don’t remember what he said to me, or what I said back. Did I pull a classic rookie mistake and respond to an “Enjoy your meal” with “You Too”? I have no way of knowing. The drive home with my new meal in tow was equally as expedient, as I hit every green light on the way back, turning a 5 minute drive (if my sense of recollecting my previous McDonald’s experiences at this location is to be trusted) into a brisk 2 minute drive.

Not 10 minutes prior did I even conceive the notion that I would be celebrating a birthday that night. I wasn’t even aware there was a birthday to celebrate until I had seen the news on Twitter. But, a birthday only comes once a year, and I hadn’t yet eaten dinner. So it was decided that I needed the purple milkshake. This series of events resolved so rapidly that I had no sense to anticipate, guess, or ask what flavor such a milkshake could be. A Big Mac, some french fries - These were familiar to me. Practically staples of a broke teenage Me that did not always have the sense of security when it came to home cooked meals. I have no illusions over the McDonald’s corporation being a “friend” or anything, and if Ray Kroc got what he deserves he is rotting in hell at this very moment, but I think the countless trips to McDonalds throughout every stage of my life and my sensory nostalgia for the sickening stench of McDonald’s cheese, grimy Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2 controllers, and unholy Playplace plastics may have played some part in my ease of willingness to place an order for this meal on my phone. As if I had all of those memories and senses of memories unlocked by a now viral photograph of a young Grimace with missing teeth standing inside of a McDonald’s restaurant. Devilishly clever marketing from the McDonald’s corporate team.

But i’m rambling now - The purple milkshake. Subconsciously, I probably assumed it was a purple sweet potato flavor, like Taro or the Filipino favorite Ube. Before taking the dive into the shake tasting experience itself, I observed two qualities it possessed:

Observation 1.) This milkshake was notably runny. I don’t often order milkshakes with my food, particularly at McDonald’s, so I’m not sure if this was par for the course. Not that I’m complaining, but the image in my head of a milkshake is something thick, that you could almost turn upside down with little to no spillage, as the stylings of Dairy Queen’s Blizzard tend to boast. No, this shake was either shook too hard, was prepared well in advance of my arrival and melted, or the milkshake machine was experiencing some kind of issues. Fortunately, my milkshake was still cold and thick enough not to be a frosty soup, but it did not instill confidence in quality of the product.

Observation 2.) The milkshake was either underfilled, or they did not give me a standard helping of whipped cream. No doubt Grimace’s Birthday was a popular thing to celebrate, if my Twitter timeline as of right now is any indication, so I suppose I could see an impromptu shortening of the milkshake and whipped cream rationing. Disappointment is too strong of a word to describe how I felt seeing my milkshake filled well below the clearance provided by the domed lid even with the whipped cream on top, but it was once again an indicator to not expect this milkshake to be more than “Okay” at best. It was his birthday, so I suppose I can only ask for so much from Grimace.

As I pulled suction from the straw, the not-as-thick-as-i’d-have-expected milkshake flooded my mouth. The experience that played out there did so in multiple distinct stages. For a fraction of a section, surprise at the blue-berryish flavor, relinquished by an “Oh well obviously”, for a few fractions more. A whole second later, confusion, or even bafflement at the choice to flavor a dairy dessert with fruit - Something I associated more with frozen, icee-like treats, and then another mental concession once I had remembered that Strawberry Milkshakes are indeed very popular as well. Still, the creamy blueberry sensation was new to me, and I could not tell if I enjoyed it or not. Before I could come to a conclusion, the oral sensation had begun to shift.

The flavor of the milkshake migrated from a creamy and sweet berry flavor engulfing my cheeks and the flat of my tongue, to something a bit more acidic and sharp onto the vertical sides and tip of it, almost as if I was consuming real fruit. This formed a sort of feedback loop where that sourness, that hint of zing would begin to make my mouth water, which would in turn only make the zing that currently inhabited my tastebuds all the more potent, until the milkshake eventually found its way back to my throat and died down.

The opening act of the milkshake was nothing to write home about, boringly sweet and a little confusing. But the climax of this taste, as fleeting as it was, was the real deal. It was a high so potent that my initial apprehensiveness towards it quickly faded. And so I took another sip. Then another three more sips. Amazed at the novelty of the shake, I had to force myself to be reminded that if I did not eat the rest of my meal soon, it would become cold. If you have ever had cold fries from McDonald’s, you should know that in this context, cold food is basically inedible food. Perhaps not even really “food” anymore.

Crispy, salty french fries, a tangy big mac, and a new wondrous non-euclidean milkshake. What’s not to love about this gluttony of riches?

As it turns out, this was actually the achilles’ heel of the Grimace Birthday meal. The delight and novelty of the milkshake was fragile. It couldn’t even settle on what it was inside of my mouth when it had no competing consistencies, textures, or flavors. Against the wave of the monolithically consistent Big Mac and accompanying fries, the milkshake had stood no chance. All those years of eating McDonald’s had cemented these flavors into the brain of my tongue and had selfishly completely and utterly enveloped my tastebuds. Been there, done that. Is this really all there is? McDonald’s is what I would consider to be comfort food, in that a simple fulfillment and instant gratification of my craving for it can temporarily and superficially soothe some of my troubles at any given time, but at the cost of contributing very directly to some of my other troubles. I would go on to finish my meal, but I did not feel very comforted this time around, even discounting whatever the usual physical consequences I would be experiencing.

The purple Grimace Milkshake simply did not compliment the rest of the meal. Perhaps if I had ordered the McNugget version of this meal, things would be different. Perhaps if my single mother at the time could have afforded to pay for me to join my local football program as a child, things would be different.

But I did not join a football program, and I did not order the McNuggets.

I know better than to worry about the literally infinite what-if scenarios in my life, and yet, I still do. I suspect even the most carefree, adventurous individuals do the same; Left, instead of Right; Soup, instead of Salad; The risk of rejection outweighing the possibility of returns of boundless joy.


This is human nature. As humans, we are all bound to the nebulous construct of Time. If humans could experience infinite Time, it stands to reason to myself that each infinite what-if scenario involving them would transpire. But whether we are conscious of it or not, Time is something we are always losing. To generations older than me, perhaps Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d is on the same level of novelty as The Internet, Fidget Spinners, and self driving cars that explode. Even something as monotonous and unchanging as the McDonald’s menu is not immune to the forces of time, being unable to help but invoke and exploit the ghosts of times past, either by way of intentional propaganda or sensory happenstance from the individual, with endless gimmick promotion after gimmick promotion, of which their appeal is propped up entirely by the limited Time they are available for.

Time has the power to ambush us at our most vulnerable moments. I was blindsided by Grimace’s birthday arriving, just as I have become increasingly often blindsided by the birthdays of those around me, and most frighteningly blindsided by my very own birthday. I can still remember as if it were yesterday what those old McDonald’s restaurants in that photograph of young Grimace looked and smelled like. I’ve lived through at least 2 total brand aesthetic revitalization efforts from McDonald’s, and have seen the same location remodeled to fit this branding more than once, with each successive remodel less potent in my memory than the last. The effects of this McTime Dilation reach me even in as brief an interaction as pulling into a parking spot to pick up my food. References to Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d is something old people do. I… Am getting Old now.

Where did the time go?

The Grimace Birthday meal at McDonald’s is a grave reminder of my own mortality.
The meal itself is a limited time offer, as is the fleeting bliss of the sharpest notes of His milkshake on my tongue. The new sensations the human experience may offer me are always suppressed and truncated by Time’s Constant, just as the purple Grimace milkshake is suppressed and truncated by a Big Mac and Fries. It is an unavoidable tragedy, but one that either inspires or scares me to make the most out of the miniscule amount of Time I have left in the greater cosmic calendar. Should I get to experience the Grimace Birthday meal once again, I will savor it, unperturbed by the prospects of the main course.

I did not play this video game.

New Vegas is a much more well researched and considered take on Fallout thanks to Obsidian, but i find myself disappointed in the lack of true narrative freedom. Maybe it's enormous reputation set up some lofty unreachable goals, but I frequently felt frustrated at the lack of dynamism and interactivity when it came to decision-making and how my companions reacted to whatever it was I was doing.

It's a hell of a whole lot better than Fallout 3 and actually feels authentic to the original game, but it being a project rushed by Zenimax higher-ups and still being built off of Fallout 3 means many of those game's issues still persist while being even more unstable and crash-prone.


Sadly, I feel like I somehow missed all of the cool stuff. Enjoyable nonetheless, but entirely unfulfilling - By far my least favorite Obsidian title to date.

Truth be told, I was kind of astonished when the credits rolled. "That's it?"

Fallout 3 feels like an earnest attempt at the impossible task of not only revitalizing the Fallout franchise but doing so for a much bigger audience on console in the form of an FPS action game; It practically never sticks the landing, but there might be just enough charm and just enough excuses that it isn't the worst game in the world.


Is it janky? Sure. Is it buggy? Definitely. Is it ugly? It may be the ugliest game I've ever played. But, is Fallout 3 nonetheless a good video game?

Also, no.

Yet there's something I either admire or feel sympathetic about when it comes to Fallout 3. The game fails to propose any interesting ideas, maintain any convincing atmosphere for very long, or pose any riveting moral dilemmas, but the worst emotion that the game stirs within me is a meager "Oh ok I guess". There are enough novel moments and characters that while I'm not particularly emotionally invested in anything, I'm stimulated enough to just keep on going anyway. Call that the Bethesda magic, I guess.

Breaking out Fawkes, exploring all 12 square feet of the black-and-white CRT VR world, and yes, even the intro where you grow up in the vault all have a novelty factor where it feels like there is an effort to provide more cinematic storytelling in lieu of, well, having good writing or quest design. Often in conversations with NPCs I will have exhausted every dialogue option without ever managing to be allowed to ask the questions I as the player actually want or need to know - Annoying from the perspective of trying to become immersed in a roleplaying game, but also functionally a roadblock fairly frequently when the in-game quest log and map is so poor and scarce on anything useful.

I also appreciate Bethesda's efforts to translate some of the game mechanics into this new 3D space - Something they could have just as easily avoided altogether. VATs, like everything else in the game, suffers from a lack of polish, but is a cool addition both in its own right and as a way to bridge the gap between the Real-Time-With-Pause action points system of old with the rinky dink shooting of 2008 gamebryo Bethesda. While not every perk is created equal in power nor intrigue, I found myself always looking forward to which new ones I had access to while leveling up. Many returning in-universe brands and items from Fallout 1 and 2 and their 1950's americana McDonalds-ization also help with making this game world cohesive with those previous titles as well as offering a solid sense of visual identity in an otherwise hyper-muddy game, and is even helped along with new additions like the various oldies radio stations that really sell the setting.

All of this to say that the word I keep coming back to when thinking about all the things Fallout 3 does right is "Novelty". In 2008 for the journeyman cRPG fan, maybe there wasn't a whole lot of novelty to be found - There certainly is nothing to be found in Fallout 3 that the original game doesn't already do better after all - but Bethesda placed all of the correct bets as to which columns really mattered for a new Fallout game for a console audience coming off of Oblivion - Surface level aesthetics, dialogue writing that, let's face it, was being graded on the curve of "Xbox 360 Video Game in 2008", and an extremely narrowed story scope that doesn't ask or even want a whole lot from the player. Maybe it is piggy backing off of all the successes of Interplay's time with the franchise, and maybe the cost of this approach is an utterly unremarkable game when removed from the context of its own history.

So, yeah. That really was it. The sheer success of what feels like a product that could never truly find its footing or purpose for existing is a testament to the power of novelty. For Fallout 3? I can give it a pass. Frankly, I enjoyed this game more than I ever did Fallout 2, even as someone who became enamored with the first game. I think for the rest of Bethesda's tenure with the franchise, I am inclined to be far less forgiving of meandering about without purpose while parading around the corpse of a once excellent game.

This game's greatest legacy is its ambitious approach to first person melee combat, and while it doesn't totally get there with everything it sets out to do, it's a shame no one else has really picked up the torch on this and ran with it.

The actual level design leaves quite a lot to be desired if i'm honest. Maybe it's the generic fantasy setting, but none of the environments really spoke to me in the same way I'd expect from Arkane's later titles.

In terms of narrative, Dark Messiah probably has the worst story in a video game i have ever played that I can remember. The plot is a nothing burger and the voice acting/dialogue is atrocious, and I hate every character every time they open their mouth.

There are like 2 things about this game that I didn't enjoy, and the rest of the things that I did enjoy I adored. Breaking down how very strongly I feel about every aspect of this game would be a lengthy endeavor that I know I would not be able to satisfyingly land with a real review, so for now, I won't. This game is truly excellent, end of story.


Do you think they've explored eachother's bodies?

I got my cowboy outfit and revolver hammer which were very cool, and i love to cook BBQ while out on a hunt. I don't really "get" the combat otherwise and don't get a whole lot of personal enjoyment over mashing two buttons over and over against HP sponges. Somehow feels like there's a ton of content and not a whole lot to do at the same time.

I don't think this is a bad video game, it's just not really for me. One of those games that starts to feel like you're only playing out of obligation to the holy progression bar and less out of the raw enjoyment of what it is you're doing from moment to moment. Fun enough for a little while with friends as long as it's on game pass. The highest praise I can give this is its truly excellent character creator that I wish more games would take from.

I kept playing thinking this game was going to be more than what it sells itself as based on other impressions I had heard, but. No, it really just is that. Pretty solid presentation and the most polished types of these games that I've played, but pretty dull otherwise. I'd probably enjoy it more if it wasn't so picky and particular with the cleaning and jobs didn't take multiple hours, but then again, that might make for a worse simulator.