140 is the type of game that feels timeless and comes out of the gate as a very complete and succinct experience. The presentation does a lot with very little. A large part of the appeal is that it is so simple -- it uses geometric shapes, the color palette, music and audio cues to great effect. There's challenge, but it's pretty forgiving with lots of checkpoints. If you meet the game on its terms without setting much expectations you'll have a great time. And it's the sort of experience that you can have 10 years between playing and it still resonates the same way.

In a desperate attempt to keep it succinct (I failed somewhat), I'll say just a few short sentence fragments:

- Substantial step backward in combat design from Sekiro understandable given the development timeline and the need to accommodate the expected playstyle and build variety transplanted from Dark Souls, but still disappointing to me, who felt everything Sekiro accomplished in terms of its combat design was so exciting, and I think could have been incorporated more... something about Guard Counters specifically feel like they were on to something but then failed to truly integrate it into how the bosses are fought and experienced.
- It's fucking crazy how big the world is, how did they fucking manage this??
- It's ultimately kinda hard to grapple with the idea that the more of the world you explore, the smaller and less magical it all ends up feeling, which is I think partly a product of the ease of fast travelling and just how simple traversal actually is (it's just Dark Souls but bigger)
- I truly do not think world design as a whole in From Soft's modern oeuvre has ever been as good as it was in Dark Souls (there will always be something in the back of my head that believes it has something to do with the above point)
- I want to feel a true and meaningful sense of danger, mystery, and intrigue, I want to truly feel lost and isolated and alone and like I've gotten myself too far down a dangerous path... Elden Ring has flashes of this, but truly, the worst thing I can say about it is that it too often feels like Breath of the Dark Souls 4. The death mechanics and the fast travel mechanics constantly undermine any chance of feeling truly unmoored from anything.
- Visually and artistically unimpeachable, unfuckwithable, a GOAT among GOATs for visual splendour and artistic direction
- For some reason I feel no desire whatsoever to ever play it again, and that's somewhat significant because, as of writing, the expansion is not yet released
- That Elden Ring, of all games, has the rigid and uncompromising fall damage mechanics of Dark Souls, will never, ever make sense to me... they have such different relationships to verticality... like... what?
- As per the above, I would give it another half star if Torrent's double jump could mitigate fall damage

Elden Ring might just be one of the games I enjoyed the most and think is outrageously good in so many ways, that just left me feeling drained and unfulfilled by the end of it.

That being said, I feel something close to certainty of the following:

- From Software have not yet created their masterpiece
- I feel that I can sense where and how the pieces were not quite in place for Elden Ring to be this masterpiece
- Where Elden Ring stayed somewhat stuck in the past, though, are, for me, in a strange way, signs that the pieces in could very well all be in place for this masterpiece to come about soon.

I'm calling a shot, here: before the end of the decade, or, perhaps, shortly into the next, From Software will release this masterpiece. Just think about it--every major game they've released since Dark Souls has shown growth, refinement, experimentation, and all in their own way have a unique visual and aesthetic and narrative tour-de-force. They are quite possibly the finest game development studio in existence at the moment, at least for their size and stature there's no competition that comes even close. It would take some kind of cataclysmic disaster to befall the studio for them to not release something, almost, epochally significant. Wait, having played all of these goddamned games, maybe I shouldn't jinx it.

Anyway, yeah, it feels appropriate and honest on my part to review Elden Ring ranting and raving in a grandiose style about things that are seemingly only tangentially related to Elden Ring. I promise, though, that my 4 stars out of 5 is perfectly honest.

The way I am magnetized to this game is indescribable. There is a surface, and then there is more, and then there is even more. It just keeps giving.

At every level, its presentation is excellent and not just in the classic videogames way — look at the screenshots, the graphics are cute; listen to the music, the soundtrack is excellent. More than that, this game is surprising in a way that I’m constantly marveling at. There is clever showmanship in its very execution that I hope anyone with the patience to give this the time it warrants can appreciate.

Over time, I have felt more and more like a master of the Void. The mechanics haven’t shifted. I have. You should too!

Freed from the shackles of traditional video game structure, the FF7 team went so far above and beyond that it's hard to fathom. No one is coming to this game without having played the original or Remake, so the heavy lifting in terms of story and characters is already accounted for. The game instead focuses its ambition entirely inward, creating the most expansive and compelling game of the AAA Open World Action-Adventure RPG genre -- by embracing Final Fantasy 7 to the highest extent.

They took the winning formulas of FFVII Remake's battle system, and overlayed 100 hours worth of quests, minigames, and exploration that consistently surprises and delights. While some elements may feel a little like chores, it never feels compulsary (unless you plan to 100% the game). Instead all of this adds up to constant new experiences that add color to the world. Even just walking through a new zone, seeing all of the unique assets created for the game makes you feel like you're feasting on the most premium digital world ever created. The most impressive thing about this is that the team didn't need to do any of this. They could have had a strict chapter structure like Remake with smaller cities a faux open world, and we all would have accepted that. But instead they wanted to make something vast and worthy of the ambition of a Final Fantasy Game. It's not a perfect game, but even when things don't quite works.... it works! It's the most imperfect game I would say is a 10/10.

Of course having such a big game take place in the first half of the second act of FF7, the story's stakes and character development is limited by default. There are of course plot twists and the big question everyone is wondering about what will happen to Aerith. It was obviously a challenge to keep a sense of forward momentum and keep the big conflict at the top of mind, but I think they did succeed, even when they made choices to delay some plot points. There is a lot of repetition but still feels well paced.

Part 3 still has a tall task ahead of itself, especially with the ways that this game raises the stakes above Remake. However I do have faith and I think we will all look at The FF7 Remake Series as a real pinnacle of long-form storytelling.

i wasn't really sure how much i liked this and then, when i got to the bonus levels, i realized that i was disappointed that there weren't more. so yes i did like it!

i do feel like there's a little bit less to the game than there appears to be on first glance - the world map is pretty but kind of empty, the side content in waddle dee town is either not spaced out well or is pretty skimpy (or both), and there are so few actual levels. but those levels are so joyful and fun, so it evens out.

and there's a sense of excitement here - last level is the most obvious example, but it really feels like the devs are having fun with the contrasting tones of cute-kirby and apocalyptic-environment. it's got some real kingdom heartsy klonoaness going on, being very approachable but still a video game-ass video game at heart. good stuff.

Now that I've 100%'ed FOAMSTARS, I have a new perspective. Splatoon and Foamstars have 98% of the same ingredients, but FOAMSTARS’s sulfates and parabens leave you with a less volumetric, healthy looking shine.

FOAMSTARS is the first game I’ve played which is designed entirely around selling people a “season pass” and it’s very informative about how these games work and why gamers are so angry at them all the time.

The honeymoon period was great, largely because it’s a decent game that’s ""“Free”"". What was a pick-up-and-play game with the promise of something new after every milestone has gotten less exciting now that it takes approximately as long to find a match as it takes to play the game. When you’re waiting almost 6 minutes to play a game that has a 6 minute timer but usually lasts 3-4 minutes, I don’t think it will be around long. Considering the game came out less than 2 weeks ago, I wouldn’t expect to be playing it in 2025.

At this stage the game is all about player engagement. They do this by dangling a list of 40 unlockable items that are changed out every 5 weeks. The first 15 levels were easy and fast to get, But slowly and surely, the grind got longer to the point where you probably need to play for 15-20 hours to unlock everything in a given “season pass”. This is a pretty unreasonable thing to ask of a normal person. So I think they give you the best items at the beginning (new character if you pay) and the middle (around where exp grinding gets annoying), and something at the end (new character if you don’t pay) that it makes you feel like you’re missing out on something of value if you don’t organize your life around the game. For players who do pay for a $6 season pass, their reward for the grinding is in the form of a skin which retails at an absurd $45 USD. It's all artificial value, they could have just sold that skin and everything in the season pass for $6 and it wouldn't seem like a "deal". People are buying and unlocking these things, even though everyone looks the same when they’re covered in foam.

For those of us who don’t want to fork out $6 a month to play the same game we’re alerady playing for free, you miss out on “content”, mostly in the form of emotes and junk skins like new colors of your surf board or your weapon or a neon light that appears on your back. These are even more trivial than the character skins, but I don’t think people actually care what these rewards are or do, it’s more that they are unlocking something for a hard day’s work in the foam mines. It’s like a transactional relationship between the player and the game.

Meanwhile I paid $40 USD for Splatoon 3 and can safely say unlocking stuff in that game isn’t the focus. The actual gameplay is why you’re there, and the cosmetics are just nice to have and largely forgettable. I am sort of ‘working toward’ getting better dualies but it’s so that I can play the game better, not just so that my character does a unique fortnite dance in the select screen. There’s also much more thought put into its single player and alternative game modes. Having the peace of mind that I’ll be able to put down Splatoon for a month, a year, three years and still have a complete experience is far preferable to the idea that if I don’t play the game for 20 hours this month I won’t unlock Mel T. as a playable character.

I never played or had interest in a live service game before and suspected it was bad, but the reward incentives seem like a very an unhealthy way to spend one’s time. I think I will wash my hands of Foamstars…. without soap.

To start this off, my experience with the original Spider-Man on PS4 wasn’t exactly what you would call positive. Heresy I’m aware considering how the game was beloved by pretty much everyone and their grandma but it just wasn’t doing anything for me at all, the problem being I couldn’t really articulate why. Having played the remaster on PC now I can more confidently highlight why elements of this game never jived with me (and some still don’t), but I do think there are others that made me appreciate this game just a little bit more.

Can’t really say much on the story, not exactly what you would call a Spider-Man fan (probably plays partly into why I didn’t initially care for the game to begin with lol), but it was fine enough. Spider-Man himself is always fun to listen to with his constant quips and banter between other people, and man Yuri Lowenthal just absolutely KILLS IT as Peter/Spidey, as he usually does with every role he’s in (Luka my beloved). Honestly all the voice actors put in a great performance all around, it’s just that I don’t particularly find the story engaging. Nothing inherently wrong with it and nothing that brings the experience down mind you but nothing that enhances it either. Outside of the story the game in general looks gorgeous, both the character animations and models and the overall city are really well done, though I do understand why people are upset that they basically changed Peter’s model in the remaster to look more like Tom Holland for whatever reason. I personally didn’t mind too much and got used to it quickly. The original model is still clearly better though.

Right off the bat, the swinging is no doubt the best thing about this game, and I think everyone can agree on that. Traversal is super fast, fluid, requires finesse to keep your speed going, looks super cool, everything about it is great. I don’t think it’s as organic as the swinging in Spider-Man 2, you can’t get as experimental or creative with web swinging as that game sadly, but it’s a super close second. I bring this up because sadly this is probably the BIGGEST positive I can give the game.

Combat for me is a mixed bag. It’s not terrible mind you, it’s fast paced, flashy and is super mobile with how you can zip around the arena from one enemy to another, but I feel it doesn’t really have a lot of variety and gets really repetitive fairly quickly. The game basically brow beats you into air comboing enemies over and over again. Most enemies on the ground can’t hit you while you’re in the air, you generate bonus focus while air comboing, it leaves specific enemies completely helpless, I mean heck there are even enemy voice lines that basically go “I CAN’T HIT HIM WHILE HE’S IN THE AIR!!!” and “DON’T LET HIM GET YOU IN THE AIR, IT’S OUR ONE AND ONLY WEAKNESS!!!” It also doesn’t help that there’s not a whole lot of variety in Spider-Man’s arsenal of moves, it’s definitely improved when you get more skill tree upgrades especially in terms of crowd control, but he basically only has like 1 grounded combo and 1 air combo and that’s about it. I see quite a few people compare this system to the Arkham games (and yes the Arkham comparisons will be highlighted throughout this review, it’s basically inevitable lol), but honestly I don’t really think the styles of combat are comparable. Arkham’s combat is much simpler, you can’t really juggle someone in the air in that game, but it’s more of a rhythmic style of combat, flowing hits from one enemy to the next, using button combinations to deal with special enemy types all while trying to get a high combo score. The closest I can compare Spider-Man’s combat to is like…a watered down hack and slash. Again, it works and it’s perfectly serviceable, just not terribly exciting and a bit repetitive. I think it especially gets tiring when it comes to the enemy base assault challenges where they just spawn like 6-7 waves of enemies at you. The gadgets you get throughout the game aren’t really fun to use in combat much, you can’t really incorporate much of them mid combo like in the Arkham games, they feel like fairly tacked on additions with the exception of like, the standard web shooter. If anything I think the more interesting elements of the combat stems from webbing enemies, not only as a means to nullify and leave enemies vulnerable (and later upgrades allows you to grab webbed enemies and fling them around rodeo style), but webbing enemies against walls or floors results in an instant KO, stuff like that is very interesting and ultimately satisfying to pull off, I wish the game had more unique elements like that when it comes to the combat.

The stealth though? Yeah it sucks. It REALLY sucks. Here’s where I think the Arkham comparisons are the most justified because this game basically just rips off the Arkham Predator sections but fails to understand what made them work in the first place. For one, stealth in this game just seems pointless to me, unless there’s like a hostage involved to where you have to stealth (there never is). But like, Spider-Man isn’t really weak to bullets like Batman is, he can just easily dodge the bullets of armed enemies repeatedly. And even when you stealthily take down everyone in the room, most of the time the game just spawns more enemies for you to fight already aware of your presence anyway, so what was even the point of picking them off if I was just gonna have to go in guns blazing anyway? I might as well have started loudly taking everyone out from the start, it doesn’t really make a difference. What’s the point of doing stealth in that situation then? To make the enemy room…slightly easier? I don’t get it. Second, I said earlier that it ripped off the Arkham stealth sections but didn’t really understand what made them work and a BIG part of that is how the enemies behave. In Arkham when you pick off more and more enemies they start to get more terrified, they turn around more frequently making them harder to ambush, they adapt their tactics depending on how well you do, things actually escalate and get harder as the stealth section goes on. Here it’s the same tune every single time, enemies just…don’t seem to care when they see their comrades hanging from the ceiling and the only challenge comes from distracting enemies to separate them to easily pick them off again. It gets really boring and dull in no time, but that’s not even the worst of it. Oftentimes the game has you play as Spider-Man’s roomates, MJ and pre-Spiderpowered Miles Morales to play more traditional “throw distractions to sneak by enemies to avoid getting spotted and instakilled” stealth sections as well. These are the absolute low points of the game, it’s so incredibly dull, everything about their gameplay sections has been done infinitely better in other stealth games, it’s just a waste and it grinds the pace to a halt so hard. Every time the game changed perspectives to either of these characters I audibly groaned because I knew what would soon follow. On top of that you also sometimes take control of Peter himself to play stupidly easy circuit minigames. I used to really hate these when I first played the game because of how time wasting it all was but considering how much of a non issue they are I’ve softened up and just stopped caring that much.

The rest of the game is what I would consider generic open world busy work. Literal Ubisoft radio towers, trinkets to collect, pictures to take of locations, black cat picture locations, generic enemy base assaults, science lab based challenges, uh…pigeons to chase after? It’s all completely optional sure, but it’s very unrewarding filler that’s plastered all over the map. Admittedly though while hunting for the bags was mundane I love how each one of the items is unique and how Spider-Man comments on each of them, it’s great world building and is super charming.

In essence I can see a glimmer of a really solid title in here somewhere, but it’s buried underneath heaps of generic open world tropes and trying hard to be something it’s not. I’ve loosened up and warmed up to this game a little bit, but I still kind of felt constantly underwhelmed and drained throughout all of the small glimmers of polished high points. All I can hope is for the upcoming sequel to REALLY renovate the experience and make it truly stand out on its own.