so far, stellar blade might be game of the year for me. the combat, once upgraded and refined with the five different skill trees, feels surreal. one of the most fun combat systems i’ve experienced in quite a while. i get vibes from a few different games, ranging from nier, soulsborne titles, tomb raider and a bit of resident evil with some of the infected areas and secret research labs. the soundtrack is phenomenal and has become one of my favorites in gaming as well. eve herself is an entertaining character to watch grow and develop— even if i was a bit uninterested in her at first. the customization is really unique and the outfits are gorgeous, and as a girl, its clothing consists of styles i could see myself cosplaying in the future. the exploration alongside can/outfit collecting is never dull and feels so rewarding.

please consider playing this game, and don’t listen to the coomers on twitter that ruin the experience for casual gamers looking for a fun, new experience. there’s quite a bit of fan service but never does it in a distasteful way.

When it comes to Final Fantasy VII, I think there tends to be a general fixation on Midgar as a centralized point of identity for the game. And while I do think it's one of the best opening segments in maybe any videogame, what makes it work so well in the grand scheme of things is just how introspective the rest of the game feels when juxtaposed to its explosive sense of grandiosity.

Final Fantasy VII's globe trotting adventure isn't primarily defined by it's sense for theatrics, but by it's mellow tone and somber sensibilities. The towns you come across are oftentimes humble and restrained, carefully crafted with precision point environmental design and delicate cinematography. There's a tender sense of balance to found throughout the whole affair, as it seeks to comfort you just as often as it alienates you. That push-and-pull dynamic it shares with the player is such a key focal point as to what make the worlds of VII and VIII feel so utterly compelling to me, and I can't help but feel that the unquestioned contrast between the science and fantasy elements plays a major factor in how sheerly effective that relationship it is.

Aerith's fate is something I'll never forget, not just because of the effective dramatization found within that one moment, but because of how silent and truly felt her absence is across the rest of the game. A lot of people give this game grief for putting the snowboarding segment not even like twenty minutes later, but the fact that the game just moves on afterwards without dwelling on itself too hard is exactly what I think makes it brilliant. Final Fantasy VII allows its punctual moments to breathe and sink skin deep, and it knows that no amount of self indulgent dialogue commemorating Aerith would ever hit as hard as opening the party screen just to see a missing slot there.

Cloud might not be the person he says he is, but what he becomes through learning to open his heart to other people and show compassion makes him more of a hero than any mere SOLDIER could ever hope to be. He never has any major transformation in regards to physicality and utility, he doesn't have to. Just as he doesn't need to be told by someone that he's finally enough, he always was.

For every magnificent setpiece Final Fantasy VII has, there's a slew of soft spoken moments of beauty that truly make this game what it is, even up to its final moments. It ends the same way it began, a friendly face amidst a writhing future of uncertainty. That faint shimmer of hope shining just as bright as it always has.

Finally, an aesthetic that panders to ME.

I am going to be real with you. Rabi-Ribi is honestly the most fun I have had in metroidvania, bar none. Yes, that includes Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. I’m not quite sure what it is about it, but it’s just so much fun.

The game’s main objective consists of recruiting cute girls to help you power a magic device in your town. To this end, you explore the big wide world of Rabi-Ribi Island to find (and fight) these characters. And holy FUCK was it fun. From the moment the prologue ends, the game’s world completely opens up. While the game points you in the direction of a few girls at a time, you can practically get most of them in any order. It was great, wandering around to see what new areas I could find and searching every nook and cranny for upgrades and items. Getting stronger and seeing my moveset and attacks slowly expand was so satisfying as well.

The game’s got a pretty cute art style and a nice and happy atmosphere and the music is real nice, but my favorite part of the game were the bosses. I was a bit skeptical at first when I heard that the game had heavy bullet hell elements, but I quickly realized I had nothing to worry about. The bosses felt like a combination of Mega Man Zero/Gunvolt fights and Touhou or CAVE patterns, all four of which I am quite fond of. Learning and dodging the patterns and using your various skills to pump as much damage as you can on the boss was fun as fuck.

I don’t know what I expected with this game, but it definitely far exceeded anything I could have had in mind. I still have 100% completion to finish up, and lots of optional superbosses to fight, and this will be the first metroidvania where I actually feel compelled to do everything in it. Besides all the achievements, theres like, over 200 of those. I love the game, but I don’t love it THAT much.

Tevi is a great metroidvania in its own right, with strong level design and great combat. But the game's much greater focus on story did not do it any favors. Every boss and ability is locked behind plot progression, which resulted in a very linear experience, with little-to-no sequence breaking, and unrewarding backtracking. Worst of all, it wasn't even worth it as the story is so thoroughly unengaging it's unreal, tanking the game's pacing with copious amounts of infodumps.

It's pretty tough to follow up an act as phenomenal as Rabi-Ribi, but Tevi sure did try.

Alongside Red Candle Game's debut title, Detention, Devotion is probably my favorite horror game of the 2010s.

It is such a shame that this game will mostly be known for the controversy surrounding it, rather than for how well crafted of a horror experience it actually is.

I am firmly in the camp that we no longer need Silent Hill as a franchise any more, because there are so many new games out now that explore similar themes in more unique ways and through more novel lenses that any future Silent Hill game will only be held back by it's franchise's own baggage.

I think one of the few developers that has taken cues from the Silent Hill games while doing something fresh instead of just solely aping SH's gameplay, visual aesthetic or vibes is Red Candle Games. The two games they have released so far are two genuinely fantastic pieces of media, and are some of the few video games that feel truly "mature" in a way most aren't. Less in terms of graphic violence or any explicit content presented, but more so in the level of understanding and tact Red Candle Games employs when broaching the subject matters they wish to address in their games.

Despite being blacklisted off of major storefronts like Steam and GOG, Devotion is available to purchase on Red Candle's own website for under $20. If you have even a slight interest in this game or Detention, I implore you to play them!

Katamari Damacy might be the pinnacle of video games. It is all things that are complex while also being extremely simple.

Thanks to Sony, early 2000s analog controls are phenomenal, and Katamari Damacy is atop of the mountain of them. I haven’t enjoyed controls in a game this much since the first Ape Escape (for real this time.) A plethora of moves you can pull off all at the movement of two sticks, immaculate.

An unbelievably, beautifully sounding game. From the text sound effects to the final credits song, there is no piece of music in this game that wasn’t crafted with love. Intimate love. Straight up sex to the ears brother.

Probably the funniest story in any game, rivaled by only Undertale, with a heartwarming message to wrap things up at the end. After every level you complete you're interrupted by cutscenes of a family talking about outer space slowly being pieced back together, by you. The young girl constantly says, “Oh! I feel it! I feel the cosmos!” and it’s both the cutest and funniest thing ever. I love it. I just love it.

The king has some of the best dialogue in gaming history, too. Namco should hold their fists high in celebration of what I think might be the best game ever made.

There’s so much to say about this game, but I want you to go play it yourself. Let this review be a guide into another dimension of gaming. Writing this review made my eyes water, because you just don’t play games like this anymore. Games aren’t made with the same kind of passion and creativity, and it’s really something to behold.

During my play through, my PS2 crashed at “Make a Star 7” and I hadn’t saved since the first level. So I immediately went back and did all that shit again, no hesitation, and enjoyed every second of it. If that’s not enough to get a perfect score, then I don’t know what is. 10/10.

Alright, strap on your skates, 'cause we're diving into the funky world of "Jet Set Radio." Now, back in the day, this game was like a breath of fresh air – the funky beats, the colorful graffiti, it was all so damn cool.

But let's be real here, folks. Playing "Jet Set Radio" in 2021 is like dusting off an old mixtape from the '90s – sure, it's got some nostalgia value, but it's also kinda dated.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the gameplay was revolutionary back in the day. Skatin' around Tokyo-to, spray-paintin' walls, and stickin' it to the man? It was like livin' out your wildest rebellious fantasies. But these days, the controls feel about as clunky as a pair of rollerblades with flat tires.

And let's talk about the graphics. Now, I'm all for retro charm, but "Jet Set Radio" is lookin' a little rough around the edges these days. It's like trying to watch your favorite old cartoon on a VHS tape – sure, it's got its charm, but it ain't exactly HD.

But you know what? Despite all its flaws, "Jet Set Radio" still manages to capture that rebellious spirit of youth. The funky soundtrack, the vibrant art style, it's all there, just waitin' to transport you back to a simpler time.

So yeah, while "Jet Set Radio" might be showin' its age these days, it's still worth lacing up those skates and takin' a trip down memory lane. Just don't expect it to hold up as well as it did back in the day.

Gave myself a day to kinda just sit with the whole experience of my first playthrough. Xenogears is one of those games that kinda just existed within the culture in a way where I always heard people vaguely gesture at its greatness, but never actually got any full details about what exactly made it so great. So for years and years and years and years and years I kinda just kept putting it off, playing many other games before and after it, hearing about its complexities but never really the details as of what those complexities were. Finally experiencing it for myself I completely get it.

An experience that is some parts Neon Genesis Evangelion, some parts Gundam some parts sci-fi novels and films, Xenogears wears all of its inspirations firmly on its sleeve and proudly bears it all as it goes into its own psychological, religious explorations of the self.

The ways in which it talks about running away from your problems rather than dealing with them and how that inevitably comes to bite you in the ass, there's a quite good example with the martial arts tournament you enter that genuinely surprised me when it happened.

The ways it delves into how trauma can inform and explain behaviors, can cause people to drift one way or another instead of facing the real problems within themselves, be lead to more and differing kinds of abuses, or completely shut themselves down due to their inability to truly cope with the things that've happened to them. But it also firmly discusses how important it is to continue to live, to continue to fight and go on despite the struggles we face in life, how we have to take responsibility for ourselves and the things we do despite our traumas, that again our traumas can be an explanation for behaviors and actions you may take, but at the end of the day you have to be responsible for your own actions.

There are a few characters I do wish were able to get more from the story (Rico, Maria, Chu Chu) and the very clear rushing of things does absolutely fuck with what was clearly supposed to be this ambitious and sprawling experience, though I will say in spite of the clear rush job that Disc 2 ends up as, I genuinely still quite loved the way they handle the presentation and style. Some of the quick cuts are really sharp and effective, I dig the kinda play stage type beat they do for some of the cutscenes they didn't have time to fully make enviornments for, I like the way they frame each part from differing characters POV's. There's a lot of cool things that make that second disc really interesting, kinda reflecting episodes 25 and 26 of NGE in ways.

It's such a strange feeling in ways cause like I kinda despised the gameplay at times (ground combat relies a bit too heavily on deathblows and grinding them out where-as I feel like the Gear combat is a bit better balanced in terms of building up to your deathblows and having to strategically manage your fuel levels in interesting ways). But even though I wasn't huge on the combat or some of the dungeon design (fuck Babel Tower) the whole thing just really came together for me. Everything it was doing was absolutely fuckin aces, it honestly reminded me of watching NGE for the first time as a teenager AS WELL AS watching both Shiki-Jitsu and Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 with what exactly it was going for in its messaging and just how much it resonated with me. How much Fei's character arc resonated with me, how dense and packed of an experience it was overall.

I think I can safely say that I'm getting into the series cause I wanna see what else can come from anyone involved who was able to put this together.

the discomfort zone got too comfortable so we made the comfort zone discomfortable. samus: meet samus

where super dove uncritically into the power fantasy that metroid II (the game with a literal Genocide Counter in the UI) unmasked and deflated, this feels like it's turning it inward against you personally. Your body, Your likeness, and Your autonomy hijacked; Your celebratory past tense role as (repeated) casual annihilationist to reckon with and cower from

it operates as something of a Super Negative Image Metroid: an inversion right down to the uncomfortable, choking grip of the direction. all that clammy ADAMsplaining, those sequestered zones, the redline urgency; everything's dialed perfectly into the exact same channel with uniform intent. even the woozy alien psychedelia's been spirited away in favour of clinical, detached interiors and astroturfed xerox biomes with some of the most appropriately sterile Oops No Backlight lighting on the GBA

and no, it obviously doesn't accomplish the same things as its predecessors, but it's not attempting to. this is a game about lack of control, and altering the format would be akin to breaking the spinal column that holds it upright. fusion's big successes (the pacing, brevity, tonal and thematic consonance, and delicate curation of tension and challenge) are the result of its structural changes. being shunted around a tiny sarcophagus isn't a flaw, it's the entire premise. duh

even without all that though it's impossible for me not to love a game with nightmare, the Profaned Baja Blast Suit, AQA's sunken banger, shots like this, and those absolutely unhinged ridley screams

quite possibly the best SA-X heavy fusion since the sultry sounds of steely dan