A pretty good metroidvania where most of my complaints are pretty nit picky. I wasn't too engaged with the story it was trying to tell, the map could show your position a bit better rather than just telling you which area you're in, and stuff like contact damage I'm not a big fan of. For some reason contact damage felt even more irritating in this game for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with how far you get knocked back when getting hit. Final boss kinda sucks, but it definitely made me think more about my loadout composition than the rest of the game did. The game really scratched my metroidvania itch I've been wanting from a game for a while even if the start of the game was a bit of a slow burn before the branching paths to kick in.

not a poorly crafted experience in any sense and i'm sure theres a lot here i lacked the generosity to find but i felt like i could completely visualize the creators' concept and reference stack with such exact clarity that it became distracting:

femininely morose akihiko yoshida and ayami kojima art/
lilting twinklechoral keichi okabe-wave ost/
vanillaware storybook Spine animations/
folklore character collection combat/
soulstroidvania wielding its genre structure of labyrinthine sparseness to spin a ludically obvious yarn about seeking ~ absolution amidst decay ~

-- and I had to uninstall because the returns are so diminished for me at this point and it was genuinely making me sad that such a clear and passionate labor of love could feel so utterly taxonomizable and consumed by its own clockably interrelated references

at this point idk its just kind of upsetting to play something with such a rigorous and dogmatic commitment to its reference material that doesnt seem to extend very far beyond the world of games themselves, even if said games are all things i find personally beautiful and worth emulating. felt like a very workmanlike and glossy medley of touchstones from works that clearly moved the creators--but executed in a sort of surface way that belies their inability to cogently, personally express how said works resonated beyond mere facsimile. no judgies girl i relate and its why i havent reliably maintained any true semblance of a dedicated art practice for years!!!

tldr; i saw myself in this and i didnt like it

i am so mixed on this.

-setting and music do nothing for me but its so clearly supposed to be a lot of this experience
-enemies hit quite hard, which makes exploring sometimes tense and fun, and other times a complete slog
-platforming is pretty fun once you get a few movement abilities but they are So Spaced Out
-equippable souls are varied and interesting, but i never liked having to level them up, it made trying new ones less fun

in the end i dunno man, i never want to feel that i have to grind to fight a boss when im playing castlevania, and certainly not at the slow rate you level up in this game

Platforming and fights
were well done pieces, and yet
pacing holds this back.

This is my HAiKU

Old school survival horror fanatics are annoyingly easy to please, aren’t we?

Signalis ticks all the boxes: brainy puzzles, limited inventory space and spooky, sombre atmosphere. It plays like your favourite Capcom horror title but looks like your favourite Konami, evoking as much early Kojima titles as Silent Hill. Whilst its ambitions towards the latter teeter between inspired and derivative at times (who can blame it), the cutscenes’ snappy and artful editing, flashes of images and text alike, evoke the rhythms of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I must admit the plot, as a result, become more confusing than emotionally engaging - I’m barely sure what even happens in the outcomes of the many endings you can achieve.

However, the game exceeds at everything it’s meant to, most importantly the gameplay. The speedy navigation of the map and item management feel like an appropriate upgrade from the clunkier controls of early-gen predecessors, considering the sci-fi action element presented here. The combat - shoot the monsters down and stomp them until they die - has a great sense of weight and intensity, particularly as you manage very limited ammo, albeit alongside some neat shock-rods and flare gun tactics. The puzzles are refreshingly difficult, but satisfyingly logical and well set up - it’s a particularly wonderful aspect considering how weak the puzzles can be in other recent horror titles such as The Medium and even Scorn. It also takes the radio trope to whole new levels with some delightful signal-based puzzle solving.

Whilst the scares aren’t quite at the heights of the big hitters, Signalis is incredibly consistent in its endlessly disquieting setting, eerie monsters and dream-like pacing, enough so to become perhaps a new favourite amongst old and new generations of horror fans.

This little blue critter's franchise sure has had a rough journey. While the new Mario movie likely won't be a masterpiece, the trailers suggest an air of polish and prestige, to match a fairly solid run of games. All the while the Sonic movie might best be remembered for a botched first draft of the character ("uuum.. meow?") rushed back into post production. As someone who grew up with Sonic and not Mario, it's quite devastating to see the hedgehog undergo such an identity crisis. In fairness, the last game I completed was Sonic Heroes, but I've seen enough of the werewolf Sonic and gun-tootin' Shadow games to know things got rough early on.

Frontiers feels like Sega and Team Sonic setting out to reclaim some relevance and insist to be taken seriously once again. The game demonstrates this firstly through reinvention of past "classics" - you'll see the familiar Chemical Plant and Green Hill zones plus gameplay of Sonic 3D, Spinball and even fishing with Big the Cat.

The rest of the game borrows from elsewhere, literally any actual classic game is up for grabs: Zelda BOTW, Shadow of the Colossus (mixed with a bit of Neon Genesis Evangeleon) and even Death Stranding. Unsurprisingly, this creates a mixed atmosphere and, more often than not, clashes with the goofy-ass characters. The Sonic 'content' itself feels rather stale against its mish-mash of a backdrop: the voice acting now feels tired and without much conviction; the random platforms that render delayed into the map are repetitive and barely rewarding; the puzzle segments are just as mundane.

The main strength I reckon would be the boss battles, as the gigantic mecha demons each have specific ways of being taken down, whether its grinding along 'tail-trails' in the air or in a sort-of wrestling ring scenario. It's rather telling though when the game's other main strength is its mini levels that throwback to those 2D halcyon days.

It's a mess but undoubtedly an ambitious one. Frontiers may even be considered a step in the right direction, or at least a better one than before. But fast though the little guy can run, Sonic will still need to work to keep up with his Nintendo contemporaries.

its a humbling feeling to find a game that feels bigger than you

i dont even know where to start describing it. at its core, its a game about not understanding. the gameplay revolves around trying in vain to learn about your surroundings - to piece it all together and find a solution to a problem - only to die not because of a lack of trying, but because we just dont have the time.

the beauty of Outer Wilds lies right there. its galaxy is small, yet feels huge and only gets bigger the more you dig. by all means it should feel like a hopeless venture to continue exploring, but its too engaging not to. there is no end goal, and it makes no promises other than the fact you will die.

and the magic is that we did anyway. even if i didnt know what for, i kept exploring its planets to find its secrets. i felt giddiness meeting every character and hearing their stories. i pat myself on the back after solving puzzles once i asked the guy at the starting campfire how to.

Outer Wilds - despite playing as an alien - is a deeply human game. a journey about facing adversity through sheer willpower despite not having all the answers, and knowing youre not alone in that.

i cant do this game a service with my $5 speak and someone else could do a much better job, and thats ok. because like i said, this game - like its setting - is big. theres so much to talk about, yet its message is so precise. its mysteries are so complex, yet so simple in retrospect. games like these remind me how special this industry is, and what kind of art it can produce. Outer Wilds is a profound experience i likely wont forget for a very long time.

it is a really good joke, in retrospect, that james sunderland's silent hill is the easiest to deal with of any of them. even james' psychosexual torture purgatory coddles the crap out of him; at one point point in the midgame i had 11 health drinks, 14 first aid kits, and like 5 ampoules. i almost wanted to beg the game to stop giving me consumables, i felt nauseatingly overstuffed. things like that really sell this sadsack nega-wife guy shit as a grim spiritual joke rather than the heart of the narrative, which is centered in the peripheral cast. i won't say much about it because it's never worth spilling blood and tears on the page for games writing (to me) but angela is such a smartly written and well-understood character by the narrative (probably one of a handful of times mainstream games actually got "trauma" "right") and eddie's inferiority complex turned self loathing turned misanthropy turned paranoid violence hits a perfectttt balance between empathetic and uncomfortable. but enough said, there's nothing new to add here, really just another marker that i finished one of these games

edit: stray thought i wanted to write down so i don't forget it but it's funny that anyone could think downpour was trying anything new by addressing "the prison system" when this game literally has an extended sequence about prison as an occult torture maze built for exculpating authority structured by spatialized m.c. escher contortions of the logic of sin and absolution that runs laps around whatever ill-conceived green mile mike flanagan prestige tv shit was going on in that game