What if some of the most inspired worldbuilding and atmosphere that gaming had to offer was packaged within a near-unplayable pile of garbage?

Frustrating, Infuriating, slow, buggy, REALLY BUGGY, badly designed, and incredibly interesting.
Every time I felt like I was getting into a groove with this game it would throw some obtuse block in my way to prevent me from truly enjoying it. I tried really hard to love this game and part of me does, the other 75% of me wants to kick it down a stairwell

There is no other game that I have played that makes me feel the way that Fallout 4 makes me feel. I feel so lonely but also so extremely immersed when exploring the wasteland. Turning on the radio and killing creatures, stealing from people, base building, the story, the silly little glitches that happen here and there along with the many other features that make this game so amazing to me. This is my favorite Fallout game in the franchise and It's a really amazing experience when you don't have a New Vegas super fan screaming in your ear that the game is bad. Mods also take this game to a whole other level and I highly recommend.

In Fortnites quest to be more like Roblox, it partners in a most unholy marriage with Lego, the original Fortnite (and Robloxs plagerism source material)

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Frankly, it feels like a small peek deep into an agitated pox, a virulent rash that you know is gonna spread and grow.

Heres the issue overall: there are almost no good Lego games. Lego, a toy based on building things with modular pieces, refuses to make many video games where you get to actually build things in an industry fulminated by things like Minecraft. There is, also, almost no other medium better suited for creative games because there are no limitations on material, you could have as many Lego bricks of any size or color or shape that you want in a way that wouldnt be really possible in real life where that plastic would have to be manufactured and then stored somewhere.

This is an opportunity that entities like Roblox seized, which was essentially just one of those cheap knockoffs like Mega Bloks but in digital form. As garbage as Roblox was, there was simply no competitor, Roblox was left to take their sweet time taking the throne.

I dont understand why Lego struggled so hard to do the very obvious thing they should be doing, and guess what: now Fortnite is here to slide in and try and secure themselves a slice of that incredibly neglected pie. Theyll make the Lego game Lego should have been making and now they get to own a piece of it themselves.

I dont know if Ive articulated it well enough here but theres a fucked up recursive thing happening here: Fortnite has Lego inside it so it could be like Roblox, which is a Lego knockoff. This is more than just a superficial thing, cuz now Fortnite is a Lego set (inside Lego Fortnite but no doubt in official Lego sets in the near future, mark my words), but it also impacts the game as well.

Because Lego Fortnite is inside Fortnite, Lego gets grandfathered into some features that might not have been designed for it. Some of these things are great benefits to the experience, the building mode snapping and nudging systems probably push the standard for prefabricated building systems - which is great for a Lego game. The simple but effective combat system is, I think, necessary for a building survival game - cuz you need something other than just building to do (this is something most other survival crafters get wrong). But these things are adaptations of things that are already in Fortnite.

And this also means theres some fucking jank. Hitboxes are weird, area transitions are... weird. Fortnites weird uhhhh.... sense of humor? crops up in really strange, tonally offputting, uniquely Fortnite ways. And thats because: this is a game taped together inside Fortnite. And you wanna know what? That jank feels alot like fucking Roblox jank. Eerily similar.

And thats where I start to feel my soul leaving my body. Fortnite is succeeding in its mission to be more like Roblox.

There is an unholy fusion happening here, someone somewhere is performing blood alchemy to bring this homunculus-daemon through the veil and into the mortal world. And theyre gonna succeed cuz this is a relatively enjoyable Lego game that should have been made a long time ago - but I cant enjoy that. I cant enjoy this bastard, because its only an omen of whats to come. The game will improve, but on a crooked angle, like the twisted wish-fufilling of a monkeys paw or a rogue genie. The end destination is already clear: were heading to Roblox, a knockoff Lego, which is now in Fortnite, which is trying to be Roblox, a knockoff of Lego, which is now in Fortnite, which is.........

But really, when you think about it, I was already cursed. Cuz I like Lego, I was a Lego kid. Lego, the original Fortnite.

platform fighters are very difficult to design! there's a lot of issues but the 2 root causes are the absurdly massive design space needed to create one (at least one approaching the polish of any smash entry), and the normals. every platform fighter character has the same inputs, whereas they have up attacks, down attacks, neutral attacks, etc. designing a characters moves in aesthetic and function around this core setup doesn't always work, and generally deviating from tools you'd expect a character to have only makes your character worse. for whatever reason, when people make these games there isn't a focus on system level counters to certain things, so in every platform fighter there's always a few matchups where one character is entirely ill equipped to deal with a certain thing.
i'm digressing a bit, but it's kind of frustrating that there's quite a number of these melee inspired games, games built off 2 decades of hindsight aping the least polished entry in a different franchise. it's not that it's melee inspired that's the issue, it's that there's a very high level of tunnel visioning in the design of these games that make them even more esoteric than melee and less fun casually. what would compel you to design a character like reptar, where:
he has an up b that goes up, then slams down- but when he goes up he has a super active, interpolated hitbox you can't contest, that due to the games slime system, gives him a free conversion thru a slime cancel that can even lead to a full reverse edgeguard onto you even though you were at 0
all his normals cover full hop height, and can be safe on shield
he has a move with infinite super armor on the charge, that the only system level counterplay is throwing him, but if you approach he can just let go and the move does 30% and has barely any recovery and he can just hold it forever too
he's also the heaviest character in the game, and can also be the fastest in terms of raw movement speed is you wavebounce his neutral b
this is just one character but the main conceit behind these games is to just 'let characters do things' unironically perpetuating the same problems top tiers in smash have. when you let characters just do things but don't account for how that will mesh with other characters, you get many situations that aren't fun to fight.
you don't even need a game to have many even matchups, melee has billions of issues but can still be fun to watch with its limited pool of viable characters because while initiative is finnicky and abstract, there's still a sense of iteration in player decision making. in these melee clones, characters layer 1 is the entire point, one you can't just play around. it's boring!

My god these games are fucking masterpieces.

I don’t know if it’s an ironic statement of their own game development skill or they legitimately think they are making serious products but either way the Euphoric Brothers are pumping out some of the most entertaining games on a MONTHLY basis that are providing some of most hilarious reactions ever. I couldn’t care less if these games are actually GOOD or not because the joy I feel playing them each time a new one drops is a kind of happiness I haven’t felt since Minecraft Story Mode. These games are just spiraling into sheer insanity and it’s dragging the indie horror community with it into the depths. The internet may make you think it’s for the worse but I disagree… it’s for the better. The hatred towards these games have given it the very audience it wouldn’t have gotten otherwise and we just can’t stay away. I personally would be content if these games just keep getting made forever and ever because they’ve perfected the formula. It’s the perfect foil to Poppy Playtime. These games are masterpieces in my eyes and can’t wait for the next one and the next one and the next one.

After playing the season preceding this, everything here was like a breath of fresh air. I liked the smaller map and the locations it brought us. The Oathbound weapons were pretty fun and I especially loved using the Shockwave Hammer, even if it was too easy to get early kills with. Augments were absolutely a welcome addition. The unique modifiers can be selected at random to accommodate for your own play style, and it makes battle royale feel less stagnant. I've got mixed feelings on the quests though; most of them varied from being good to just ok, but the Oathbound and Find it in Fortnite quests were sleepers. Nothing but walking around half the goddamn map and playing boring Roblox-tier games. Overall it's not a bad season. If they had crossed over with a better anime instead of Mid Hero Macadamia, I would have been generous and gave it 4 stars but we can't have nice things.