Hot_Anarcocoa
BACKER
Base Game: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Fighter Pass 1: Super Smash Bros. Ultimater
Fighter Pass 2: Super Smash Bros. Ultimatest
Seriously though, each entry in this series has always topped the last one for me, and has consistently remained my favorite fighting game, and this is truly the ultimate version of it. I could nitpick little things, like I wish the online worked better, 3 player smashes suck when they tend to be 1 person getting picked on, I wish we had more mascots like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro in place of some of the anime swordsmen we got, but ultimately (ha) I can't deny how much enjoyment I've gotten out of this. Nintendo kind of created their own whole little sub-genre of fighting game with this series and nobody has been able to do it better. A great party game and also great competitively, it's one of a kind.
Fighter Pass 1: Super Smash Bros. Ultimater
Fighter Pass 2: Super Smash Bros. Ultimatest
Seriously though, each entry in this series has always topped the last one for me, and has consistently remained my favorite fighting game, and this is truly the ultimate version of it. I could nitpick little things, like I wish the online worked better, 3 player smashes suck when they tend to be 1 person getting picked on, I wish we had more mascots like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro in place of some of the anime swordsmen we got, but ultimately (ha) I can't deny how much enjoyment I've gotten out of this. Nintendo kind of created their own whole little sub-genre of fighting game with this series and nobody has been able to do it better. A great party game and also great competitively, it's one of a kind.
1994
Played through co-op with a friend on the SNES Online service for Switch. Game absolutely slaps. Very fun shmup that doesn't lean too hard into "bullet hell" difficulty which means someone like me can enjoy it. Awesome tunes and pixel art going on, fun and fast levels so it can be beaten in one sitting. Just frantic enough to keep you engaged but not so frantic that you need to stress yourself to keep going. Definitely recommend checking it out.
Tetris Effect:
I'm yours forever
There is no end in sight for us
Nothing could measure
The kind of strength inside our hearts
It's all connected
We're all connected in this love
Don't you forget it
We're all connected in this love
Me, not leaving a space for the square piece: Shit! Fuck!
I'm yours forever
There is no end in sight for us
Nothing could measure
The kind of strength inside our hearts
It's all connected
We're all connected in this love
Don't you forget it
We're all connected in this love
Me, not leaving a space for the square piece: Shit! Fuck!
2020
Not only a very solid tech demo for all the new capabilities the PS5 has; but also a Super Mario quality level platformer, and a charming homage to the history of PlayStation. If y'all enjoy this one I really recommend giving Tearaway: Unfolded a playthrough because that game should have come with the PS4 like this did with the PS5 but it went really underappreciated!
I'm reading some of the negative reviews on here and I feel like I played a completely different game than y'all? I went through two routes on here, Mat and Brian, and intend to go back and do more later. I found the writing to be very charming and funny, and the core gimmick of everyone being a single parent to be an interesting dynamic between the characters.
I really like how all the different characters explore their own theme, such as Brian's toxic competitiveness or Mat's social anxiety. If you're going to play this game I would go in expecting to deal with things more along these lines, rather than expecting the game to tackle the myriad of ways homophobia effects gay men in the real world. The game sets itself in a sort of unrealistic but optimistic fantasy, in which you can be gay or trans and find love free of discrimination, and it's one of the things I liked about it.
I think taking the extra step from "this game doesn't portray anything too specific to gay culture" to "this is actively one of the most homophobic games I've played" is an extremely exaggerative critique. I do see the argument that it could be viewed as erasure, and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone for whom that's a deal breaker. However, due to how well I thought it did at dealing with the things it did choose to focus on, as well as laughing out loud at multiple points during my playthroughs, I loved this game overall. I look forward to playing more of this in the future.
Mat is the dreamiest daddy, and I have a band called the Skammunist Manifesto!
I really like how all the different characters explore their own theme, such as Brian's toxic competitiveness or Mat's social anxiety. If you're going to play this game I would go in expecting to deal with things more along these lines, rather than expecting the game to tackle the myriad of ways homophobia effects gay men in the real world. The game sets itself in a sort of unrealistic but optimistic fantasy, in which you can be gay or trans and find love free of discrimination, and it's one of the things I liked about it.
I think taking the extra step from "this game doesn't portray anything too specific to gay culture" to "this is actively one of the most homophobic games I've played" is an extremely exaggerative critique. I do see the argument that it could be viewed as erasure, and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone for whom that's a deal breaker. However, due to how well I thought it did at dealing with the things it did choose to focus on, as well as laughing out loud at multiple points during my playthroughs, I loved this game overall. I look forward to playing more of this in the future.
Mat is the dreamiest daddy, and I have a band called the Skammunist Manifesto!
1996
Kirby is a menace who roams the peaceful fields of Dreamland and has the power to consume others and appropriate their abilities for his own benefit. As he rampages through nature in an unending attempt to satiate his own hunger, it is little wonder that his final nemesis be named Marx. In this essay I will...
(I never actually got to meet Marx because I cannot be bothered to finish The Great Cave Offensive.)
(I never actually got to meet Marx because I cannot be bothered to finish The Great Cave Offensive.)
2019
In Outer Wilds you are stuck in a time loop and have to restart every 22 minutes, and you're tasked with exploring a solar system. It's really hard to talk about this one without spoiling it, but I'll try to keep it vague. This game is a masterpiece at creating emergent narrative for the player. Each of the planets you explore works in its own way, and it's up to you to figure out how to explore the solar system. It's like one giant puzzle to solve, figuring out how everything interacts and how things change over time. The whole system is so perfectly designed, you could start anywhere, and you'll discover clues to other things somewhere else, and everything just fits together really well. You start the game with everything you need to finish it, and could conceivably finish it in 22 minutes. But for most people it will take around 20 hours, because you need to venture out into the system to gain the knowledge you need to get to the ending. It's just really cool that the only thing you gain through all your journeying in this game isn't some special tool you need to advance, it's just knowledge, learning how everything works, that lets you get closer and closer to your goal. And that ending is definitely worth getting to.
2020
This review contains spoilers
The story of this game is framed as a mystery centered around trauma stemming from transphobic violence, and the conclusion that made the most sense of the two ending options was "actually you remembered it wrong, it wasn't transphobia."
2013
Me and the boys after we get vaccinated
2017
Tricked into playing a game about Mormonism by cute fox.
This game tells you to go around freeing slaves with the same emotional weight as collecting feathers and that's pretty wack. Like, yup, got 35 feathers and freed 46 slaves today, check it off the ol' Ubisoft task list.
2022
Hello fellow guess the game players!
Same thing as Framed but with games so I'll not be logging this daily for the same reason. Also much easier than Framed just due to game art styles being so varied. Definitely has a better database than Framed though!
Same thing as Framed but with games so I'll not be logging this daily for the same reason. Also much easier than Framed just due to game art styles being so varied. Definitely has a better database than Framed though!
This is a criminally under-talked about game imo most likely due to a combination of under-marketing, Marvel fatigue, and the fact that it came out right at the end of the year making it miss a lot of GotY discussion. I really liked this though. It's a turn based tactics game from the team behind the rebooted XCOM franchise, fused with card battle gameplay and with a hefty dose of BioWare inspiration as you talk to your team between missions.
If it wasn't for that BioWare bit this would've easily been a 5 star rating from me, but I really could not care less about the story in this game. The idea of being able to chat up and build relationships with my favorite Marvel heroes as the game progresses is appealing to me, but it just failed in the execution. The dialogue is the Joss Whedon quip stuff that most people have grown tired of by now. Your companions are split into two camps, The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel etc.) and The Midnight Suns (Nico Minoru, Magik, Ghost Rider, etc.) and much of the game's drama comes from these two groups bickering like petulant children. The plot is also a very generic supernatural good vs. evil story with a twist you'll see coming a mile away.
If you can put that aside though, there's some five star gameplay going on here as you'd expect from a Firaxis game. You're given a limited amount of card plays, but there are some cards which will extend your card plays if you get a K.O. with them. Weaker cards build up hero points which you can then spend to use more powerful cards. Positioning is also important as a lot of abilities involve pushing enemies into hazards, teammates, or other enemies. A lot of the gameplay is spent trying to find the optimal way to maximize the amount of moves you can make in a single turn, and it makes for a fun little puzzle every encounter. I also really like how you unlock difficulties over time, and that those difficulties are very transparent as to what values they're adjusting to make the game harder (enemy H.P. and damage, number of revives, stronger enemy reinforcements.) You get a star rating of 1-3 depending on how good you do with each mission, and after you've earned enough of those stars the next level of difficulty unlocks. It was fun playing on the harder difficulties and really having to optimize my moves to a much greater level of efficiency, and seeing myself get better at the game as more was demanded from me.
They also just really nailed making each character feel unique with the gameplay. Captain Marvel for example starts a match weak, but after playing 3 of her cards she can go into binary mode, doubling her damage and giving her a ton of block, which you have to maintain because she loses binary mode when out of block. Captain America is a super tank, having abilities that let him gain block as he damages and taunts enemies to target him. Ghost Rider will gain souls with each enemy he K.O.'s and after a certain number of souls are collected his max H.P. will increase and he will get an ability which will let him steal H.P. from enemies. Those are just three examples but each character is just as well thought out as these ones. It also incentivizes using a variety of characters by offering research rewards unlocked by using different characters, which I greatly appreciated as usually in these BioWare style games I will pick my team of 3 or 4 people for the gameplay and then only interact with the others in the hub area. It also just makes the whole experience that much more fun because you are constantly playing in different ways because of how these character's gameplay styles differ.
It's also quite a lengthy game if that's something that matters to you. You can easily sink over 100 hrs into this if you're playing through the whole story and exploring the hub area between missions. I definitely recommend this one to fans of the tactics genre.
If it wasn't for that BioWare bit this would've easily been a 5 star rating from me, but I really could not care less about the story in this game. The idea of being able to chat up and build relationships with my favorite Marvel heroes as the game progresses is appealing to me, but it just failed in the execution. The dialogue is the Joss Whedon quip stuff that most people have grown tired of by now. Your companions are split into two camps, The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel etc.) and The Midnight Suns (Nico Minoru, Magik, Ghost Rider, etc.) and much of the game's drama comes from these two groups bickering like petulant children. The plot is also a very generic supernatural good vs. evil story with a twist you'll see coming a mile away.
If you can put that aside though, there's some five star gameplay going on here as you'd expect from a Firaxis game. You're given a limited amount of card plays, but there are some cards which will extend your card plays if you get a K.O. with them. Weaker cards build up hero points which you can then spend to use more powerful cards. Positioning is also important as a lot of abilities involve pushing enemies into hazards, teammates, or other enemies. A lot of the gameplay is spent trying to find the optimal way to maximize the amount of moves you can make in a single turn, and it makes for a fun little puzzle every encounter. I also really like how you unlock difficulties over time, and that those difficulties are very transparent as to what values they're adjusting to make the game harder (enemy H.P. and damage, number of revives, stronger enemy reinforcements.) You get a star rating of 1-3 depending on how good you do with each mission, and after you've earned enough of those stars the next level of difficulty unlocks. It was fun playing on the harder difficulties and really having to optimize my moves to a much greater level of efficiency, and seeing myself get better at the game as more was demanded from me.
They also just really nailed making each character feel unique with the gameplay. Captain Marvel for example starts a match weak, but after playing 3 of her cards she can go into binary mode, doubling her damage and giving her a ton of block, which you have to maintain because she loses binary mode when out of block. Captain America is a super tank, having abilities that let him gain block as he damages and taunts enemies to target him. Ghost Rider will gain souls with each enemy he K.O.'s and after a certain number of souls are collected his max H.P. will increase and he will get an ability which will let him steal H.P. from enemies. Those are just three examples but each character is just as well thought out as these ones. It also incentivizes using a variety of characters by offering research rewards unlocked by using different characters, which I greatly appreciated as usually in these BioWare style games I will pick my team of 3 or 4 people for the gameplay and then only interact with the others in the hub area. It also just makes the whole experience that much more fun because you are constantly playing in different ways because of how these character's gameplay styles differ.
It's also quite a lengthy game if that's something that matters to you. You can easily sink over 100 hrs into this if you're playing through the whole story and exploring the hub area between missions. I definitely recommend this one to fans of the tactics genre.
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy is good again! Well, at least this remake series of an older game is so far. There’s so much to love about this game, the audio and visual upgrades to the music and the setting instantly got me nostalgic. The art direction for the various locations in Midgar really make this game stand out, every area’s distinct color palette gives it it’s own unique feeling. Final Fantasy VII just has its own whole sci-fi/fantasy thing going on that you really can’t get anywhere else.
The combat is a breath of fresh air, combining real time fighting with an ATB meter for your magic and abilities, and allowing you to slow the combat down at any time to really soak in the visuals. It’s a really nice blend of action and tactics, and I never got tired of it. So much so that the areas of the game that some have criticized as pacing issues, never managed to bother me, as I enjoyed the combat so much. A part of me still wants to go back and try it on the harder difficulty which forces you to manage your combat resources even more closely for a truly tactical experience.
These characters are more than two decades old at this point, but their personality still shines through in this game. I love how spunky and fun Aerith is. Barrett still being a political radical fighting for the planet against a massive corporation is one of my favorite things, and definitely hit different in 2020; and his soft fatherly side is also wonderful to watch. I love Cloud’s fake tough guy demeanor, and how the improved animations let you see the subtlety in his performative attitude.
Before this game came out, I was really worried about how it would handle the whole Wall Market section, given some problematic elements in the original game. But they updated it in a way that made it stand out as my favorite section of the entire game by far. The Honeybee Inn song still gets stuck in my head, and I am a stan for Andrea Rhodea.
Ending spoilers past this point
The ending to this game is what elevates it to something special for me. It’s this whole meta-commentary on what a remake is, and how creators can feel an overwhelming pressure from fans to not stray too far outside the lines in re-imagining the original work. In the end, the main characters of the game ultimately decide to destroy their fates, which kept them tied to the events of the original game, and free the creators to take the story where they want to. It’s a bold ending for a AAA game to take, especially for a game this beloved. I’m excited to see what comes next, and hopefully they stick to their guns and have a story they feel passionate about telling, and aren’t going to renege on the ending or just use it as a way to add fan service. But whatever happens with the sequel, the boldness of this first part’s ending will still be there to stand on its own, and deliver a powerful message about art.
The combat is a breath of fresh air, combining real time fighting with an ATB meter for your magic and abilities, and allowing you to slow the combat down at any time to really soak in the visuals. It’s a really nice blend of action and tactics, and I never got tired of it. So much so that the areas of the game that some have criticized as pacing issues, never managed to bother me, as I enjoyed the combat so much. A part of me still wants to go back and try it on the harder difficulty which forces you to manage your combat resources even more closely for a truly tactical experience.
These characters are more than two decades old at this point, but their personality still shines through in this game. I love how spunky and fun Aerith is. Barrett still being a political radical fighting for the planet against a massive corporation is one of my favorite things, and definitely hit different in 2020; and his soft fatherly side is also wonderful to watch. I love Cloud’s fake tough guy demeanor, and how the improved animations let you see the subtlety in his performative attitude.
Before this game came out, I was really worried about how it would handle the whole Wall Market section, given some problematic elements in the original game. But they updated it in a way that made it stand out as my favorite section of the entire game by far. The Honeybee Inn song still gets stuck in my head, and I am a stan for Andrea Rhodea.
Ending spoilers past this point
The ending to this game is what elevates it to something special for me. It’s this whole meta-commentary on what a remake is, and how creators can feel an overwhelming pressure from fans to not stray too far outside the lines in re-imagining the original work. In the end, the main characters of the game ultimately decide to destroy their fates, which kept them tied to the events of the original game, and free the creators to take the story where they want to. It’s a bold ending for a AAA game to take, especially for a game this beloved. I’m excited to see what comes next, and hopefully they stick to their guns and have a story they feel passionate about telling, and aren’t going to renege on the ending or just use it as a way to add fan service. But whatever happens with the sequel, the boldness of this first part’s ending will still be there to stand on its own, and deliver a powerful message about art.
2019
I think this game didn't get the attention it deserved because it released on the same day as Untitled Goose Game, and the whole internet went wild for that game. This is a pop album as a video game, and has a really cool double narrative that is at one time about defeating evil arcana to restore balance to the world, and at another about learning to love yourself. This is the most pure joy I've felt playing a video game in a long time, I was mouth open in awe and grinning with joy throughout the entirety of its 1 1/2 hour long playtime, which like any album you love, you'll want to play over and over. The mechanics of the game start with you just moving around collecting hearts to the music, and then the game adds new twists to the gameplay with every level, while keeping everything so intuitive that you feel like you're playing something new but you're never lost as to what you're supposed to do. The game is just bursting with color and creativity, and I'm going to stop writing about it now so that I can go play it again!