I have a lot of nostalgia for Minecraft because I grew up playing a pirated version of its Alpha version that somebody handed my older brother in middle school. Many of my best memories from that time come from messing around with tools, like the time my brother used a cheat tool to spawn in ice blocks and TNT to create a tsunami and then used that TNT on my savefile to dig me so far inside of a mountain that I had to create a new savefile.

I have respect for the game as it is.

But I just gotta level with you, man; Minecraft has never clicked with me. I can't put my finger on it, but games like this always begin and end with me returning to them every few months and then abandoning them out of boredom. When I try to play with people who don't get bored immediately, I'm outclassed by people who have been playing this for years, so it becomes a pretty boorish showcase of feeling like I'm behind the times.

Again, again, again: I get that it's a good game. But it's just not for me.

(For personal reasons, I've decided against marking these types of impressions as reviews in the future. If you want to see more of them, be sure to check out the list I'm compiling of each.)


This is the most profound case study on how following industry trends a little too closely can bite you in the ass I've ever seen. The question of "in ten years, will you remember Babylon's Fall" is about as rhetorical as one can get; in less than twelve months, you won't even be able to play Babylon's Fall. And need I remind you, this game came out this year. I'd say it's unprecedented if it weren't so fucking depressing. Here you have this somewhat large group of people banding together to create something that, cynical or not, has pieces of them inside of it. I mean, sure, it's an aggressively cynical experience, but come on, it's there. And then what? The game comes out and, to the chagrin of its money-hungry publisher, is birthed to a mother who was warned her child would be a stillborn nine months in advance. Nobody buys it, but people are talking about it. So they create updates and try to get them talking about it for the right reasons—no Bueno. Sony released Morbius twice, and Platinum Games made more content for Babylon's Fall. Tomatoes, tamatoes. By the end of the day, they're staring at a pipeline of content that, even if it's better than it has any right to be, is going to see about as much exposure as the Backloggd page for Terrifying 9/11. Regardless if the decision came down to the developer or the publisher (I'm willing to wager it was the latter), you have to at least have some empathy for the developers in that experience. Their baby, their very, very mediocre baby, looks like Butthead.

Earlier this week, GameStop was giving away copies of Babylon's Fall for free when they weren't outright destroying them. The name No Man's Sky has grown to have a double meaning. It's the game's name, but it's also what many a gaming enthusiast will recognize as a solid redemption arc. Business doesn't make for involving storytelling unless you're playing a strategy game. And even then, are you really going to tell me that looking at fictional stock prices for ten hours is as gripping as the second season of Fargo? "Redemption arcs" don't happen. Perception can change over time, but a subset of enthusiasts will always howl at Sean Murray's name because of what went down in 2016. If you want to say that Cyberpunk is a good game, that's fine now, but eight years from where I'm standing today, that might still be a controversial statement with the wrong crowd. If you want your perception to improve, there has to be passion. No Man's Sky might have lacked a lot of promised features at launch, but the promise of a galaxy with a near-infinite number of planets to explore without explicitly being told to do so was still compelling. And Cyberpunk, buggy and half-baked as it was, was still pretty fun. What chance did Babylon's Fall have outside of the pedigree of its developer? What, you're expecting me to believe that James Franco will remake As I Lie Dying and not make it bad? Names don't mean anything. "What's in a name?—"nothing. Talent shifts, and among the talent that stays or is as competent as the talent that came before, humans don't breathe binary. If you're a creative person at all, falling on your face every so often is like a Monday. We don't like Mondays, but who are we going to complain to about that?

Babylon's Fall was shot in the foot early, and that wound dug deep. If one is to believe that this grabbag of investor-approved buzzwords is to fault for not attracting enough attention, they have to recognize that.

I love Elena so much, and I thank Street Fighter III for giving her to us, as a people. Seriously had no idea she was a 6ft tall high school girl, and the fact she only kicks is honestly super interesting. I don't think she's as broken as she is in Ultra Super Street Fighter 4, but she is a testament to what makes SF3 special. The game itself has it's own style to it and while the music is fresh and the stages are dynamic and pretty, I can see how this game would feel like style over substance at first. Aside from parrying, SF3 adds more supers into the mix to give the player plenty of options, but that simply doesn't make up for the lackluster roster. Not to mention, that Gill is pretty much one of the worst final bosses in fighting games around with so many of his attacks just outright shutdown options, his super that heals him all the way, and the random amount of super combos he pulls on you. Gill is like a much tamer Rugal, sure you can actually do combos and supers on him, but he will kick your ass immediately if you slip.

I initially had no desire to play Overwatch 2 as I had already made my peace with the first game and was content to move on. However, as I had friends who were interested in playing, I went into this "sequel" wanting to give it a fair shake. I know it's only been out a week at this point, but given the largely unchanged nature of the experience, I feel it's easy to render a verdict: Overwatch 2 is the most lateral change from one game to the next I've ever seen.

That lateral movement, by the way, is mostly in regard to gameplay. We'll get to the Battle Pass situation later. But in terms of enjoyment, it's still primarily the same experience. What was fun about the first game will still be fun in Overwatch 2, and what was frustrating about it will remain a frustration. The change to 5v5 is the big switch in vision for this game, and while I have always been vocally opposed to this change, in reality, all it's done is allocated the flow of the game in a sideways manner. Instead of shooting shields and nothing ever dying, you're now shooting one tank that's never dying. This is because to compensate for the removal of one tank, Blizzard has decided to massively buff them all to allow for better survivability. As a tank main, this is something I feel very confident commenting on.

This is where your enjoyment may vary when it comes to Overwatch 2. If you're really good at tank, or if you're playing with a really good tank main, it's become much easier to clean up and dominate a match. Tanks have always low-key been the carry of Overwatch but it's shifted even further in that direction now. If all you care about is winning, get good at tank and reap the rewards. You don't need to rely on someone else because they've given you incredible tools for sustaining on your own. However, this also comes at the cost of what I enjoyed about tanking in Overwatch, which was the focus on protecting your team. There are fewer plays to be made here, as tanks are now functionally just fat DPS heroes and the game encourages you to be selfish with your abilities to survive. The satisfaction that came from playing that role in a team environment is all but gone.

As for supports and DPS? Eh, kinda the same as always. Supports have less protection so have fun with that. It's why I rarely play the role in this game. DPS does have more opportunities for big plays themselves but you're going to find yourself in more duels now so it'll be sink or swim for the egos of people who love to shootbang. I will give credit to Blizzard for the design of the three new heroes, as they seem mostly well thought-out and balanced. Junker Queen in particular is a good example of properly designing a hero for the 5v5 format as her kit wouldn't have made much sense in the old environment. The new maps and game mode will take some getting used to but I don't have particularly strong feelings about them one way or the other right now. Either way, this certainly doesn't make up for the lack of content for the base game these past three years. I expected a lot more here.

Now let's get into monetization. Overwatch 2 has switched to free-to-play and with that comes the now standard Battle Pass integration. For anyone that played the original game, this is a straight downgrade. There is no getting around that, and there is no excusing it. It sucks. I know loot boxes in general are on the way out, and I'm not going to tell you it was the most ethical implementation of cosmetic unlocks, but Overwatch was VERY generous in letting you earn them and easily accumulate new items and credits to get what you wanted, even if playing casually. This was especially true of people who had been there since the beginning, like me, who had earned enough credits to basically have everything unlocked. Now? Pay money or you get nothing.

I understand there needs to be an incentive for people to spend money on a F2P game but the reality is they've done it by taking stuff away. This isn't a brand-new game where everyone's on the same starting line. Stuff that used to be earned easily is now locked in a shop for ridiculous prices, and the best new stuff requires the premium battle pass. Worse yet, you can't even earn credits through completing the battle pass to pay for the next one, a fairly standard feature for games that use this monetization system. Instead, you can earn those credits by doing weekly challenges, which at the moment grant a pittance of 60 a week. The Battle Pass costs 1000 credits, without even factoring in the use of those credits for anything else. As such you are looking at MONTHS to earn enough to do anything with them. This is just not acceptable, and that's not even getting into how difficult it likely will be for casual players to complete the battle pass in the time required.

Worse still is the decision to work new heroes into the battle pass system, requiring players to grind to level 55 to unlock them if they don't want to pay. For a game that's entire identity is built upon switching to the right heroes to use in the right situations, Blizzard is putting those on the free track at a competitive disadvantage. This is even more concerning for the competitive mode itself, where if the hero becomes meta and suddenly you're stuck with players who don't have them because of this decision, you're now ruining the game for everyone, regardless of whether they bought the battle pass. This absolutely must change for the game to have any sort of future going forward, but given this seems to be their big ace-in-the-hole in terms of forcing people to spend money, I don't expect them to give in. This decision alone is worthy of the game receiving a low score. It could be the best experience I've ever had and I would still hold this against them strongly.

And of course, the real elephant in the room is that this is just straight-up not the game we were promised. Overwatch 2 was sold on being a sequel with the PVE campaign at the forefront, and at launch, it is nowhere to be found. Instead, Blizzard will deal out campaign missions out on a seasonal basis, further straying from what was originally promised. It's starting to feel like the big story mode we all hoped for will end up feeling as disjointed and disappointing as the prior seasonal event story modes found in Overwatch 1. That, coupled with the MASSIVE connection and stability problems for the game's launch, all serve to offer up the reality that despite the lengthy development cycle, Overwatch 2 was pushed out to market well before it was ready. As a result, it feels half-baked in every conceivable way. This is a shame because much like I said in my review of the original Overwatch, this is a game and franchise with so much potential, but it seems like Blizzard cares more about making a quick buck instead of building something truly memorable that will draw disillusioned players like myself back in for more than just a few weeks.

I changed my mind, this game is for morons. I will literally be the only one on the team with a positive K/D, any semblance of objective time, and these fucking maroons still have the gall to say "tank diff". Every time they speak into the mic I can literally hear them mouth-breathing and drooling across their neckbeards. Only absolute negative IQ ingrates play this game, and that's not even mentioning the myriad of problems this game has with balance, matchmaking, glitches, etcetera.

In short, this game is played by fucking ninnies and solo tank was a mistake.

My original review was removed. I guess my message wasn't clear enough when I told Activision/Blizzard to eat my ass.

This is a bad game made by a bad company. It is basically an update of the original (as it completely replaces it) and serves no purpose but trying to hide the rampant system of abuse taking place within the company by throwing the media coverage back onto this. I can't even call them allegations because they've been proven. . If you enjoy the game that's fine, but it is simply just a watered down form of the original that doesn't update, improve or innovate it in any meaningful way and is simply a distraction for a larger issue.

Eat my ass, Activision/Blizzard

Gosh, there's over 250 reviews for this one and 4000+ plays! Wowzers!

I was a Sega baby with a Sega CD and until I started this a few days ago had never played a single second of Sonic CD! It's fun!

I really like how it seems WAY more like Sonic 1 than any of the others, which is really neat from a like, time capsule perspective.

I'll absolutely cop to something though: I don't really know what I was supposed to be doing. I got all of the Time Stones more or less as early as I was able to, and the rest of the time I just kinda wandered through the levels like Forrest Gump. I never understood what I was supposed to be doing.

I oftentimes randomly ended up teleporting into the past or future, which seemed to be based on how fast I was going; I understood that. I didn't quite understand why I wanted to be doing that? Or not wanting to?

I don't really care though; I had a blast regardless. I love the way it sounds and I loved the cool enemies and the cute flowers and the anime cutscenes and the cool Robotnik designs.

This was a lovely time!

SO I've done it; after having played video games since I was 4 years old I have now, today, beaten a Castlevania game! In fact, having played this for even more than 5 minutes constitutes the longest I have ever played a Castlevania game!

And it was.....fine! Hahahaha like, really, it was pretty fun; totally fine platformer stuff. I will say it was wildly frustrating and I'm glad I had the ability to rewind in Retroarch because my goodness gracious there's lots of fiddly stuff with those enemies. For instance, that clocktower level?! Oh dear lordddddd I hated that.

I would say fully 2/3 of my enjoyment came from my favorite thing in video games: a wonderful opening and interstitial animated sequences. I love love love LOVE the Mega CD and PCE-CD because of those sorts of things, and this does not disappoint.

Anywho, Castlevania as a series pretty clearly isn't for me, but this was pretty fun. I now "get" Castlevania. Hooray for me.

I find it very interesting to go back to the games that inspired entire genres or first installments of beloved franchises. I've come to find out that the games that inspired and are first installments generally don't age well, however, there are some exceptions like Halo: Combat Evolved. Wolfenstein 3D is sadly not the exception.

Now when I say "haven't aged well", it doesn't mean those games are bad, but they do prove to be a lot harder to go back to as games of the same genre or games a part of the franchise improve and expand upon what came before or what inspired.

Wolfenstein 3D in this case is known as the grandfather of the FPS genre (said every journalist site) and the classic Boomer Shooter design we have all come to love. It established many things from having multiple weapons on hand, the run-and-gun design, the idea of having pushable walls, revealing secrets, and was even the first game ever to have you fighting Nazis.

The game is broken up into 6 episodes each with 9 levels and one secret level, with the 9th level being where you fight the boss of the episode.

This game is interesting as it isn't like other Boomer or Retro Shooters as the enemies don't come at the player at once, instead most are separated by rooms, most likely to encourage stealth. B.J. himself doesn't have much health and can easily be killed. When I first played this, I thought running around wouldn't be a good idea given how fragile B.J., but after going back to it a second time, I realized I was just being an idiot and not playing the game right. Although, there is one thing that makes the game kind of bullshit. If an enemy gets the drop on you and shoots you at point-blank range, you will almost certainly lose over half your health. Which gets REALLY annoying.

The Mutants are the most infamous of this due to their total lack of an "aiming" state (in other words, they'll immediately skip to shooting instead of having to raise and look down the sights of their weapon). They're also good at getting said drop on you due to them making no sound at all. The reason for this lack of "aiming state" is primarily because they have guns mounted to their chest. This in turn, makes them the most annoying and worst enemy in the game.

The AI is actually impressive for its time. Enemies pursue you outside of their room, opening doors in their way, reacting realistically to your presence (shouting something in digitized German), hearing gunshots, and reacting when shot are all things that weren't common in enemy AI at the time.

One of the biggest issues with this entry is the lack of a map, which means you can get lost mainly because of how lots of areas look the same with the game using decoration as a way to differentiate each room and the level design consisting of mostly mazes. There is also no distinction between what's a normal wall and what's a secret. In later games, you can tall what is and isn't a secret if there's a misaligned texture or a crack in the wall. This forces you to touch every single wall until you find the right one. If you do want a map you can use the ECWolf source port, which comes with an automap feature.

Let's talk graphics. For a game from 1992, it had pretty impressive graphics and sprite work for its time and actually holds up pretty well today. The environments on the other hand, are the thing that hasn't aged well as they recycle many kinds of walls from brick to stone to dirt, which gets a bit tiring to see after awhile and is boring compared to future FPS games.

The weapon selection is also really limited by FPS standards as there are only four weapons in the whole game. A knife, which is useless since you need to get in close proximity with an enemy, giving them plenty of opportunity to shoot BJ up close and deal massive amounts of damage to him; even if you do manage to injure an enemy, you need to stab them multiple times before they die, and other enemies will still be alerted to your presence when you stab an enemy. A pistol, which is the starting gun and is really weak as per tradition. A machine gun, which does sizable damage. And finally, a chaingun, which is the most powerful gun in the game and does good work of enemies. Even if you have all these weapons, it's pointless to use anything other than the more powerful gun since they all use the same ammo making your arsenal even more limited.

The controls are also an issue. They're pretty stiff all things considered and feels as if you're floating instead of walking or sprinting, but that's not the only thing wrong with the movement. If you've grown accustom to playing games with mouse controlling where you look and keyboard controlling you're movement (like many have today), you'll come to find out that you can't strafe sideways like in a modern FPS. Even when using mouselook (you have to hold down a separate key to strafe, which also prevents you from looking left and right). Fortunately, this has been corrected on the unofficial Open GL port.

I've always found it interesting to go back to games that inspired entire genres, but there's a reason why most don't really go back to them. I feel like this game is a prime example as to why. It was very impressive at the time, but has been outdone by its successor. Despite this, it's still a decent game.