My recent obsession with Beat Saber has finally been the death knell for Ring Fit Adventure, after months of telling myself I'd return to Ring Fit one day hopefully. It just feels too much at points like I'm just being told an exact list of what to do by a personal trainer, which I very much get is the point but I much prefer how something like Beat Saber works as a game that I'd want to play even outside of the immense health benefits and that those health benefits are instead just a bonus for doing something I'd want to do anyway.

It doesn't help that the aesthetic is a lot. It's dorkiness was initially charming, but hours of hearing the same phrases over and over grows grating. It's hard for me to be too down on the game as I can see it works for a lot of people and clearly does some things very right, but it is not at all for me.

great pacing, great characters, great voice acting, great writing, everything is here! even the gameplay isn't terrible like i thought it'd be, at absolute worst its just forgettable

edit: looking at top reviews of this game is really confusing to me. obviously this is a critique of the military and military shooters as a whole, but it's not you who's making the decisions. you're not a silent military man, the game isn't in a first person perspective, the player is just guiding walker through what he would've done anyway.

Ok, I finally played through game that can be best described as part pretentious kurzgesagt video, part crazy Doctor Who episode.

I am incredibly torn on this game. On the one hand, two chapters in particular just absolutely blew me away with everything they did (Improvisation and... the other one ;>). "The other one" in particular is an especially amazing experience. It clevery turns the tropes of the Film Noir on its head, delivering a message that is so simple yet they manage to make it feel ethereal. The improvisation chapter managed to hook me too - I spent way more time in it than I had to. And overall: the presentation is brilliant, absolutely top-notch in soundtrack and visuals. And then there's the less good parts...

First, this game has heavy scripting problems. Sometimes I was able to fix them by going to the pause menu, sometimes I wasn't. These NEED to be adressed, I had to replay some chapters because I was stuck at some point. Also: many other chapters feel quite hollow, gameplay- and presentation-wise. The last two chapters retroactively kinda help in justifying that, but it's still unhelpful while first playing through the game. Some puzzles also seem... a little dumb. And I would advise every developer in existance against Simon Says, please. It doesn't work. At all. The improvisation chapter worked despite of it, not because of it. This game is also incredibly pretentious at times and it never really works for me.

I'm still giving this 3 1/2 stars. Why? Because of the amazing presentation, the clever twist on Film Noir tropes (which I actively hate when they are recreated uncritically), the brilliant soundtrack and the two chapters I absolutely loved. Everything else in this game is mediocre at best. But I love it for these parts in particular, and these will always stick with me. And now to wait for the soundtrack on Spotify...

Rough around the edges and messy in a way that personal art so often is, but stylish, bursting with earnestness and complicated emotions, and deeply powerful. I found a lot of myself in it, in how it captures the feeling of too-fast love that feels like a gravity well pulling you in, impossible to escape, consuming all thoughts around you. The writing here is often clumsy, but in an intentional and effective way that underscores how it feels to handle these raw emotions, and grants real weight and closeness to this story about how idealized, fictionalized conceptions of relationships can set you up to fall into abuse and exploitation, on both sides of the coin, but also why those dreams of fairytale romance are so intoxicating. The presentation, while simple, is also wonderfully cool and evocative, with some of the best sound design I've seen of late.

One note I should mention is that, as mentioned on the game's various store pages, the game is about a relationship with someone with BPD. I don't have BPD, nor do I have the kind of intimate experience with someone who does that is portrayed in this game. I say this to make clear that while I felt that the game portrayed the relationship with nuance and care, I also don't know what the hell I'm talking about, and could absolutely be wrong about that read.

That said, I think an awful lot of this game is intensely relatable anyway. It won't be for everyone, but it shouldn't be. Sanding off those rough abrasive edges would only dull the impact, and I think the game comes close to that already with an all-too-gamey scene towards the end. Still, Milky Way Prince was for me, and it might be for you too.

It hurts, but sometimes, that's what you need.

I remember reading some time ago that Minesweeper and Solitaire were deliberately chosen as the preinstalled games on early Windows computers because they would teach users important skills for interacting with a mouse - Minesweeper for left/right clicking and Solitaire for dragging and dropping.

Wii Sports played that exact role for the Wii and the Wiimote. It enabled players to get used to the new hardware quickly, and more importantly - made the process fun. It's obviously not as polished as more recent games, but it's actually still good fun to play today and that's all I can realistically expect from it.