Reggie Fils-Aimé famously said “if it’s not fun, why bother” during Nintendo’s E3 2017 showcase. For some, these have become words to die by. An easy phrase to parrot when the individual faces a system they can't come to terms with. Some see it as a harmless way of saying they don't enjoy what they're playing, but I have never appreciated its implications.

If your definition of “fun” equates to anything you like, this quote probably resonates with you. But I've rarely seen the word used that way, and instead, this obsession with fun’s necessity in games seems more damaging than anything.

“Fun” is fast, approachable, and easy to control. An immediate stoking of the attention span, constant engagement, or a light enjoyment lessened in friction. Some see Dark Souls as unfun due to its slow, heavy movement and methodical combat. Dark Souls 3 is “fun” because it's quicker and lighter; you can roll faster, further, and more often. Nothing is wrong with either approach, yet one is sometimes dismissed.

Not everyone defines the term this way, but I’ve seen it used to debase games with an unconventional design. Traditionally “unfun” foundations have a harder time finding their place in communities who won’t acknowledge its worth unless it’s immediately satisfying. I remember this phrase being used during Death Stranding. It was picked apart, labeled as “unfun” because it’s a package delivery walking simulator. Who wants to be a delivery man, right? Even “walking sim” has become dismissive, used to label things as lesser.

Regardless of Reggie’s intention in the full quote, which specifically emphasizes that games are also a journey, even inviting the player to “open their mind,” that snippet has shifted into a rallying cry for people to do anything but. If something must be “fun” to be worthwhile, and that definition of “fun” is remotely limited, it denies ideas that don't fit under a narrow bracket. It is a quote accompanied by frustrating ignorance.

Not everything needs to be fun. Other artforms aren't seen this way, so why are games different? Is it because they're interactive? Is interactivity meaningless without fun? Art is feeling, and there’s no single feeling a work has to evoke to be successful.

Playing Resident Evil reminded me of my stance on this.

It isn't fun. It's claustrophobic, stressful, and frustrating. No encounter, room, boss, or weapon is traditionally “fun.” It's an unforgiving, labyrinthian puzzle; a constant check of resources where memorizing rooms and locations is vital. Even saving the game is limited to a resource, one I often found myself without and had to make huge stretches of progress knowing one mistake could send me back an hour.

Bosses are a cold, calculated check of your mindfulness towards collecting and preserving as much ammo as possible. You enter a boss room, move only a little, and fire everything you have. They die and you move on. You wasted ammo, and that made progressing more difficult. No part of this balance between figuring out the path forward while wasting as few resources as possible was fun, alongside trying to figure out at what point the player should save.

Yet Resident Evil is enormously good and I’m enamored. I've reversed my tune on the Ink Ribbon system after years of avoiding it in other titles in the franchise. The fear that arises from knowing one mistake can ripple; your decision to not save means you're risking everything, or being too frugal by going nearly an hour without a save, brings rise to an unmatched tension.

Games don’t have to be fun to be worthwhile, successful, or good. Art is too complex, and limiting any medium in this way sucks. It’s not something to be afraid of, either. Fun absolutely rules, but I’m tired of people treating it as a necessity. I’m tired of being seen as lesser when expressing love for old, unconventional, or mechanically complex experiences. I’m tired of new things being inherently better because they’re faster, more fluid, and easier to control. No feeling is worthless and games can accomplish anything. Just keep an open mind, experience it, and vibe. Fun isn’t everything.

If you support that quote and think “that's not what fun is, it's just whether or not you like something,” then that's fine. We can disagree. But I’ve seen people use the requirement of “fun” to shit on non-traditional systems before. People shouldn’t be afraid to say something isn’t fun yet still love it. There's so much more to feel :)

Last year I began revisiting childhood games, finishing the ones I liked well enough and publishing some rough thoughts. Bringing attention to far off memories was wondrous, even when the games held up less-than-excellently. It’s as if I had the power to pluck unfinished dreams from my mind and play them to their conclusion. Finding new ways to appreciate what I once loved, and beating games I never had the patience or skill to, was magical. Writing about them was equally important, as I wouldn’t want them to turn into a loose memory again.

But I’ve been slacking lately, so here’s the next game :)

Disney’s Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse is an absurdly long name. I don’t think I ever knew it was called that. The front cover doesn’t particularly help, as “Magical Mirror” and “Mickey Mouse” are so prominent, especially being the only words in color. Kiddo me called it Magical Mirror so that’s what I will refer to it as in this review.

Anyway, Magical Mirror is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the “Thru The Mirror” Mickey Mouse short from 1936. It involves interacting with environments seen through fixed cameras, collecting key items, and figuring out how to progress through a collection of bizarrely laid out rooms inside a massive castle.

It’s also a joint project between Capcom and Nintendo, which is bewildering; you’d think sticking those two studios in a room during the GameCube Era would result in an absolute classic, but this got dismal reception. IGN gave it a 4.8/10 and it has a 50/100 on Metacritic. Ouch.

But regardless of its awful reception, this inexplicably spoke to me as a kid. It probably helps that it came out when I was like… four years old, although I’m sure I retried it a couple of times during the years that followed. I also operate solely on v i b e s, of which this game has plenty. Sadly, like most things I played during my youth, I never finished it.

Regardless, my attachment to this game is intense. Its toy train section in particular has stuck with me; I recall exploring a kid’s room with wooden blocks making up a little station as a gorgeous orange glow gave it a nostalgic warmth. Stepping through a tiny hole in the wall and seeing another side of a makeshift train station as a miniaturized Mickey Mouse traveled between rooms collecting gold stars sits powerfully in my mind.

I was shocked when I got to that section of the game: All of that is technically here, but it is not present in the ways I remember. If you showed me a YouTube video of that scene, and I wasn’t sure what game I played as a kid, I would have definitively told you “no, that’s not the game.”

At some point between playing this and revisiting it, my memory got generous and filled in massive gaps, making it seem more imaginative. It’s a supremely small part of the world and while the train station is there, the memories I have of exploring an elegant, detailed rendition in third person was complete fantasy. It’s also possible I had a vivid dream expanding upon that part of the game and that’s what my brain decided would become the memory. Who knows!

It’s one of those classic examples of “I remember this looking better.” I typically don’t subscribe to that mindset, as I am a firm believer that old games look phenomenal, but I can’t deny I felt it during the earliest sections of this game. It’s the most I’ve ever been flabbergasted by my own rose-tinted glasses.

But it didn’t take long for me to reach new and unexplored regions of this mirror-realm. There’s a sort of bizarre, difficult-to-parse atmosphere here that speaks to me. I actually think it has an effectively playful adventurousness in its seemingly endless, maze-like mansion. Its several, minimally detailed rooms with few key props are a major vibe.

I loved the clock mechanism room, and I felt cozy stepping outside and seeing the 2D painted town in the background at the top of the tower. That joyous feeling is only enhanced by music full of dreaminess and light-hearted, goofy fun.

But it is not a pleasant game to play. Mickey Mouse takes forever to do anything, and the animations make him feel like he’s doing the Dora the Explorer thing where large pauses are used to try and get the viewer to answer some sort of question. But of course, there is no question, it’s just unnecessarily drawn out.

There's no intrigue to its point-and-click elements. You just move around environments and animations play out with few to no exciting puzzles; it's all very simple. I like its visuals and soundtrack so much that it absolutely saves it, but it's quite boring.

The mini-games are hilariously poor technically but they’re admittedly charming. Flying a toy plane and shooting little pellets at a giant rubber ducky, fireballing barrels rolling towards you, or dancing to a rhythm mini-game as your Mickey Mouse doppelganger does sick dance moves to an admittedly groovy track are all fun in concept. This game just does not have the execution, even if it’s cute to look at.

I like that the little ghost that’s been tormenting Mickey Mouse through the whole game seems genuinely upset when he has to leave. It’s classically wholesome to turn the “villain” into a cute little fella who just wanted to play. Mickey has no hard feelings towards him in the end. It’s very loving and precious :)

Overall, Magical Mirror kinda rules, but it kinda doesn’t. Any vibe-operated individual who doesn't mind a game playing like shit if they have an interesting experience won’t regret their time. I respect this game for its weird little rooms, but I can’t pretend I loved playing it.

Although… I did play it for four hours straight until completion in a single sitting. Impressive considering it’s very easy for other games to lose my attention fast. Dunno! Maybe the game does rule and it’ll grow on me as I forget how it played and remember more of how it looked and sounded.

I’m obsessed with aesthetics and environment design. Striking ideas woven into something's presentation gets me giddy. My tendency to undervalue a game's positives when its art direction is lacking—and vice versa—is my most identifiable bias. I often say I’m a visual person and that’s something I take pride in, but it can be a curse.

I loved how Halo Infinite felt when I first played it. There is immense joy in grapple-hooking across its open-world, using my full kit to come out unscathed against a dozen bosses, and the bone shattering explosion when popping an Elite’s head with a sniper rifle. Gunfights, the new utility equipment, and the sound/feel of each weapon is accompanied by exceptional weight. Approaching battles in any number of classic Halo ways, and adapting when things go wrong, is enormous fun.

But Infinite’s campaign didn’t click years ago. It’s obsession with rehashed aesthetics stretched over the franchise’s longest campaign to date underwhelmed me. I thought I might have just been overly cynical, so after the addition of co-op (alongside the latest update finally letting me play without crashing), I was itching to revisit it.

Yet not much has changed. Infinite is painfully uninventive. Its biome is limited to homochromatic grassy plains littered with identical trees and hexagonal pillars. It does a decent job keeping this region fresh with mountain peaks, ravines, and little swamplands, but it feels more like a single MMO zone than the focus of a full game. Some adore the way this world looks and I don't necessarily disagree; it's lovely in a vacuum. If this were a slice of what Infinite had to offer, I'd speak of it fondly, but the over reliance on that concept loses its novelty fast.

On the other hand, its missions are properly dire, with few memorable set pieces alternating between minimalist forerunner structures and dark metal military bases. In particular, the last four or five missions are chock full of reused blue corridors. I have no love for the spiritless presentation of this campaign. It’s as if it was designed by the only person on Earth whose favorite part of Halo is The Library in Combat Evolved. Regardless of their many mechanical flaws, both Halo 4 and 5 are significantly more exciting in scope.

Infinite ends up coming across as a demo; an unfinished experiment revealing what this franchise could look like when thrust into an open-world. It successfully proves that Master Chief running, gunning, flying, driving, and grapple-hooking throughout a massive map is tons of fun, but it doesn't have much meat on its bones.

I've never been narrative-obsessed when it comes to Halo, but it’s fitting that the plot boils down to a convoluted attempt to get a Cortana-esque A.I. quipping with the Chief like the good ol’ days. It’s a “here's what the next big step for Halo looks like” without actually taking steps to push the series forward. It's 343’s attempt to get back on the “right track” through a reboot of sorts.

But even after the launch, there was reason to be excited for its future. “Infinite” as a title wasn't related to its themes, but instead signaled the beginning of a 10-year plan. No more numbered entries or sequels. Infinite would house Halo for a long time. And that was exciting. Its first expansion could have knocked it out of the park.

That reportedly fell apart. Story expansions are not in development, the Slipspace Engine might actually be a total mess, and the campaign was originally planned to be much more. You can watch the Infinite engine demonstration on YouTube to see how few of these ideas made it into the final game: In my review at launch, I wrote “much of what was revealed in the announcement trailer is not present. Where are the large animals? The rain? The oceans? The snowy mountains? The moonlit groves occupied by stags? The raging thunder? The shifting deserts? The coiling trees? The waves of great bulls stampeding? The underwater vehicles exploring ruins? The beaches?”

So yeah, Infinite feels like a demo. And after revisiting, it’s still an unbelievable mess on PC. My girlfriend crashed dozens of times, and I couldn’t play for years because it wouldn’t stay open for more than a few minutes. Half of the time we respawned, we couldn’t swap equipment. During the final mission, we had to do it without dying because checkpoints were broken, and if we failed, it would reset the level. Sometimes we’d lose big chunks of progress out of nowhere when loading our save.

And I'm sad to see Halo once again promise the start of something new yet end unfinished. We were meant to explore more of this Halo ring, see what the Endless would turn into, and probably get new weapons, fight more bosses, and unlock extra equipment. With the potential for more environments and less dire campaign missions, I was looking forward to it.

Infinite is tons of fun when it works, but it's rarely exciting to look at. I can see why people love it; it feels great in your hands, but the other half of what I look for in Halo isn’t here.

I'm shattered. No game has made me sob this hard. I often say "I'm crying" when I watch, read, or play something sad, but that's mostly exaggeration. I just tear up and very rarely actually cry, but no, I straight up loud sobbed after finishing this. I broke down. My face contorted and couldn't hold back a stream of tears for half an hour straight. My lips were quivering and I was groaning and I could barely breathe; I almost never respond this intensely to things.

Stories about apocalypses normally benefit from their own silliness. These narratives never feel real; they're either too fun, dramatic, or action-packed to have substantial weight. But Goodbye Volcano High is exceptionally hard to swallow.

These feel like actual teenagers. They have real interests, their diverse identities are relatable, their dialogue sounds genuine, they mess around naturally, their tabletop sessions have all these little details and comments that make them feel like the ones I've had, they have awfully relatable casual conversations, and their issues are grounded. For a game about dinosaur people, I always felt like these kids were human.

When you take some of the most real feeling characters I've met in any game and have them face the existentialism that arises from fears of an apocalypse, I was constantly on edge. This is a story where its characters have to grapple with the inevitability of their deaths, and at no point was I not deep in thought regarding their fate. Their happiness, each tuft of fun, and all of its love and positivity is carried by the gargantuan burden of questioning what will happen when that asteroid hits.

When characters make comments about "asteroid facts," describing things like "if you hit solid rock hard enough, it can liquify," it's some of the most disturbing shit I've seen in a game. It may seem tame in a vacuum, but when your world and characters are this convincing, the concept of a realistically approached end of the world is terrifying.

It's especially upsetting in the beginning, when everyone treats the asteroid as a joke, with folks making memes and using it as a crutch for humor. People claiming they wish the asteroid would just hit to get them out of certain situations is so painfully real. It's a behavior that actual people would showcase, and little moments like that make me think about our own existence and how little time we have.

Its narrative is tied to our most future-conscious period—senior year of high school, where we are expected to make definitive decisions on what we do for the rest of our lives—and those futures being shattered by an unavoidable natural disaster is heartbreaking. To see these kids lose their ambitions and dreams, and there is nothing they can do but accept their fates… it's far too fucking heavy for anyone at that age to have to go through. Just thinking about it nearly brings me to tears.

And I cannot put into words how much I relate to the protagonist. Fang failing to find acceptance from their parents, difficulties with their gender identity, conflicts and conversations with their brother, being pegged as the spoiled, selfish brat, and even something as simple as being Arabic... all of it feels so scarily relatable to my personal experience. Many people won't quite get that from it, and it is probably a huge contributor towards why Goodbye Volcano High felt so real for me, but I see myself in Fang more than I ever have in any fictional character.

Today, I'm flying across the Atlantic ocean to see my girlfriend for the first time. I can say a lot about Goodbye Volcano High, but the only thing that matters is that after finishing it, I want nothing more than to hug her as hard as possible. To value the people in my life and the short time we have. The few moments of happiness we can spare in something so ephemeral.

Goodbye Volcano High shattered me, but rather than it having a debilitating effect, I want to do better at cherishing the people I love.

It’s hard to believe this exists. Its illustrations are straight out of a warm children's book; it's carefully woven to evoke this all-encompassing sensation that you're deep in the throes of a fairy tale, with its most sinister moments only solidifying that feeling. Its effortlessly delightful soundtrack and phenomenally soft, cozy drawings brought such a sincere smile to my face.

Somehow, Square Enix published this dating sim RPG where you can ONLY romance other women. Yep, it’s 100% queer. Alongside its shockingly uncomfortable commitment to abstract horror, staggering production quality, and 90s anime aesthetic inspirations, it is a personal dream game. I cannot fathom how this is actually real.

I’m only just recovering from my first playthrough, but after catching four of the game’s endings, I don't have much else to say except I’m in love with Little Goody Two Shoes. I want to write more about it someday soon, but I am deep in adoration after having finished the game tonight and need to get the word out there.

Please, if you're a fan of 90s anime, love abstract horror, are into magical, fairy-tale aesthetics/music, or are remotely excited by the idea of sapphic love stories, do not miss out on this. Little Goody Two Shoes is wonderful.

Indescribable speechlessness is common when engaging with art. I often hear variations on the phrase “I need to sit on it" when people experience something they can’t easily come to terms with. We’re so used to this happening that we don’t think much more about it, but our brain’s inability to process something without time is fascinating.

If you’ve ever been around a baby, they often go through long bouts of perplexity. Expose them to something new, whether that be a piece of food, toy, object, or the outside world, and their face appears blank. Their mouth goes ajar and they wear this funny look, seemingly processing everything around them. This doesn’t always happen, but I’ve seen it frequently enough to wonder why it’s so common.

Life is complex and babies have it thrusted at them in huge chunks at a time. It's no wonder they're so confused at that age. Young brains have to unravel thousands upon thousands of phenomena that they eventually see as normal. My brother became a dad more than a year ago, and watching my niece look fascinated by the world has made me realize something: This perplexity isn’t exclusive to babies.

We are experiencing it all the time as adults when exposed to new things, but we might not recognize it as the same behavior because we already understand a majority of what’s around us. We can focus our attention on what we do know while our minds passively process that experience, and even if we think about it actively, it’s still surrounded by things we understand.

In art, we can call works that have this impact “thought-provoking.” They offer new perspectives on life and fresh methods of presenting the medium. We find in them unfamiliar ways of telling a story, crafting a world, or even reframing our views on what a video game can accomplish. This feeling can arise in many ways and you might prefer a number of synonyms to describe the phenomenon, but the idea is everywhere.

Time is required to digest these moments, because the period we spend experiencing something is only the beginning of our engagement with it. Actively thinking about it after the fact, alongside how it passively shapes us, are some of the ways those moments develop. Reflection is a vital component of any experience.

I made a similar metaphor when speaking to a friend about Jak II. I wasn’t shy in expressing how miserable the game made me throughout my 14 hours of playtime. Yet after finishing it, I claimed to be conflicted about its score because I thought I could reflect on it positively with time.

She then asked me, “why can’t you just admit that Jak II is bad?” She didn’t mean that in an objective sense, of course. She was simply referring to how frustrated it made me and how little I enjoyed playing it.

But those 14 hours I spent playing Jak II, regardless of them feeling like an eternity, were only 14 hours. I will spend the rest of my life, dozens of years, with the experience of Jak II permanently a part of me. I won’t be spending every moment of my future thinking about the game, but I do believe the ways in which an experience seeps into every other facet of your life is intrinsically larger than the limited time you spend with it.

Our minds are an enormous canvas, and everything we go through has something to contribute to that canvas. Those experiences shape us in one way or another, for better or worse, with some brushes having more bristles than others. And the experience itself is only the first of many paint strokes originating from whatever that thing might be.

Just this year, one show’s themes resonated with me so strongly that it has informed my future and could result in me making a monumental life choice in the coming years. Even if I don’t make that choice, it is directly responsible for me seeking to fulfill a dream by studying many hours a day, making language exchange calls a few times a week, and hiring a tutor. That 24-episode series, which took no longer than eight hours to finish, has already had its bristles in several other corners of the painting that depicts my life.

How Jak II will impact me isn’t fully in view yet, as completing it only reflected a fraction of its contribution. After all, I’ve spent far too long writing an essay on the concept of reflection because of it. I did not know this would happen when I first completed the game.

This occurs with everything, in often imperceptible ways, regarding each moment. Our tastes, interests, and methods of thinking are a result of what we’ve been exposed to prior. It’s not hard for me to link my favorite genres and styles in gaming to things I played during my most formative years, or my core values to my environment while growing up.

Formative years aside, art can still be educational and continues to shape me even in adulthood. Outer Wilds taught me that it's most rewarding when taking a breath and exercising patience, as the euphoria brought about by grasping at a solution is unmatched. I initially grew frustrated by its puzzles and resorted to Googling solutions, but when the Outer WIlds expansion launched, I beat it without looking anything up.

That initial playthrough taught me something: It revealed how much I value that sort of experience and I regret my lack of patience. I realized that I would’ve enjoyed the game more if I had stuck firmly to my own wits. In summary, that first playthrough of Outer Wilds gave me the tools necessary to experience similar titles (and its expansion) in my own way.

This overlong tangent has a function: It can be difficult to unravel our feelings. Putting them into words is harder.

That happened with Jak II. I’ve tried writing this review five times in the last several months. And I get an itchy sensation at the back of my head whenever I read the result. I’m seemingly incapable of putting my thoughts on this game into words. I assumed this was a result of me needing time to process the experience, but I’ve overestimated the nature of my perplexity.

How deeply I value reflection isn’t to say that I always have to come away from that period of contemplation with a positive outlook. Jak II’s existence confounded me for months. Its shift from a lighthearted platformer to a genre-blending Grand Theft Auto-clone brought my brain to its melting point. I entertained the possibility that I would return from that confusion with a favorable outlook, but that did not end up being the case.

It took me months to accept this, but when I did, I began working on this review. I initially had it separated into four chapters with a prologue, a section detailing expectations, another about the experience, and a finale analyzing thoughts upon reflection. I have several thousands of cut words not making it into this final review.

Some of that goes in-depth criticizing this game’s frustrating victory conditions, awful third-person shooting, minimal weapon variety, open-world boiling down to mindlessly traveling from one point to another, obnoxious sexualization, objectives lacking an organic function within the city, non-existent enemy variety, and repetitive music throughout Haven City.

I don’t want to write that review. Jak II just sucks. Aspects of this game are worthwhile, which is part of why I clung on for so long. Its desert slum occupied by ravaged sandstone buildings, jagged wooden bridges connecting fishing homes haphazardly built upon a river, and totalitarian cityscape constructed from dark metals with a vertical layer of uniform highways are unforgettable. Jak II is visually compelling from start to finish.

But beyond my appreciation for its world, the experience yields a shallow blend of popular gaming trends at the time. It is an amalgamation of mismatched genres birthed out of a harmless, colorful collectathon. The Precursor Legacy instilled a childlike joy within me, but this is an uninspired mess. I’ve spent months letting Naughty Dog’s off-kilter sequel simmer, alongside this unfinished review hanging over me, but it deserves no more of my time.

Lies of P never manages to escape the shadow of its inspirations. I’ve played nearly a dozen Souls-likes and none have had this gargantuan of an obsession with Souls aesthetically and mechanically. Anyone who has seen gameplay will go “haha, Bloodborne,” but it’s actually a blend of a majority of FromSoftware’s modern catalog.

I could sit here drawing hundreds of lines on a whiteboard connecting how much of this game wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but I don’t particularly care to focus on that flaw: This is my favorite non-FromSoftware Souls thus far, and while Neowiz’s overreliance on familiar genre tropes saps memorability from the journey, I’m teeming with excitement for this developer’s future and this was a truly wonderful (albeit painful) 35-hour journey.

Lies of P makes a strong case for itself with the tightest mechanical foundation in any Souls-like, only matched by Team Ninja's Nioh—and even then, I enjoy playing Lies of P far more. It is the first FromSoftware-inspired title to realize the potential of the most exhilarating moments in that iconic franchise.

I was also in shock experiencing the game’s high difficulty. Souls-likes are often easier, which I attribute to the lack of fluidity in most of those titles. It’s hard to justify a deeply challenging experience when your game feels like shit to control, yet Lies of P pulls no fucking punches. This is one of the hardest games I’ve played.

Several bosses, level design quirks, and enemies match the oppressive difficulty of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters and Dark Souls 3's DLC. Hitting credits was accompanied by a massive sigh of relief. I'm still in awe by how intensely this game had sharpened me; I had to ascend to Godhood during the finale to come out of the other side.

The consecutive perfect parries I was pulling off considering the game’s exceptionally tight parry window can only be explained by the birth of a sixth sense. I experienced short bursts of what it felt like to become superhuman, and I was shaking during the final moments of many boss fights. It has been a long time since my heart has pounded that hard.

Several bosses took me 10+ tries, with six or seven in particular taking more than an hour each. The longest I spent on a single boss was around two hours and thirty minutes, although this was because that fight in particular forced me to get good at the game.

It’s not just frustrating difficulty for the sake of it, either (excluding one awful boss). Lies of P justifies its intensity with fantastic fights and over-the-top visuals that will certainly stick with me. If you love the unhinged move-sets and animations from Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, or Elden Ring, you will feel right at home here. A few in particular are likely making it on a list of some of my favorites ever.

Lies of P also benefits from excellent mechanical additions. I initially thought weapon durability would be a novelty, but having to manage it within a fight is intense, especially when some bosses are marathons and others attack so fast that there aren’t many opportunities to sharpen it.

Being able to break opponents' weapons by doing enough consistent perfect parries (or attacking them while they’re blocking) is an incredible feeling, especially because it can greatly reduce their reach and lessen the damage they deal. Being rewarded with a fundamentally easier fight because you took the time to learn parry timings is awesome.

Parrying to regain health is similarly brilliant, alongside the absolute clutch addition that allows you to restore healing items if you’re out by hitting enemies enough. I have pushed through a good few bosses by being consistent in my defense and offense to restore Pulse Cells. Bosses even restore health passively through a faded red bar, which always puts the pressure on the player to be aggressive.

There’s also a posture system similar to Sekiro, where parrying and dealing damage will gradually whittle away at an enemy or boss. When you break their posture, you can deal a fatal strike; it won’t kill them nor remove a full HP bar like Sekiro does, but it deals a great amount of damage and resets their passive healing bar.

I also love that the weapon system allows you to separate the hilts and blades to combine them into whatever monstrosities you please. I’ve seen some really funny stuff out there, and through my own experimenting, there’s tons of potentially goofy combos. I wish it was easier to spec into other weapon types, but that’s just a normal Souls issue.

The expected leveling system is present, but the most vital progression mechanic are P-Organs. Each of the benefits they provide are vital towards making your battles against bosses go from “what the hell” to “okay, this is possible.” Do not underestimate how important those buffs can be. Two in particular are somewhat overkill because they are necessary to make the dodge not feel like ass; Neowiz probably should have just made that part of the base dodge.

And while the game has a lot of love for Soulsborne aesthetically, many moments do far more with it than just brushing the surface level. Running through abandoned train stations, underground malls, and industrial factories battling carnival-esque puppets, toys brought to life, or gigantic mechanical monstrosities absolutely ruled. Quite a few designs are incredible, and I found that the more Lies of P strayed from what I’m used to in Soulsborne, the more engaged I was. Really makes me hope the next Neowiz title relies less on those tropes, as this game’s most original ideas are phenomenal.

In particular, Lies of P has a mechanic where you rest in a hotel and listen to music. Throughout the game you find vinyl records acquired by either completing quests or killing certain enemies. Return to Hotel Krat, pop that bad boy in, and enjoy. It's a refreshingly unique concept for a game that is so clearly in love with FromSoftware. Actively inviting the player to just sit there and enjoy some good tunes seems simple, but it’s the best.

I’m a bit mixed on the soundtrack. The songs you play on the vinyl are wonderful, but the boss music is too Bloodborne with its epic orchestra and intense choir. Lies of P’s aesthetic differences call for a different sound. The world has a somewhat modern, European-town setting and it’s mostly focused on a steampunk, clockwork feel. One song that appears within the world stands out to me, as it's related to an in-world character's performance, and it's absolutely beautiful. Stuff more in that line would have really worked. Yes, I would happily listen to a lady serenading me in French during a boss fight.

The ending is sincerely beautiful. The way this narrative plays with the most notable aspects of the traditional Pinocchio story and weaves it into the narrative is brilliant. Questioning the humanity of puppets and the nature of the "I want to be a real boy" concept is the core of this story. It has some parts of the "less is more" cryptic storytelling in Soulsborne, but the main narrative beats are clear and compelling. I won't go much further into story spoilers, but I have a lot great things to say about it.

Lies of P is a grand time. It might lack originality, but it makes up for this in execution. It’s the closest a Souls-like has come to capturing FromSoftware’s magic and I could see myself bumping this up to a 4/5 with more reflection. I cannot wait to see what Neowiz makes next.

King's Field IV has made me question the idea that FromSoftware only started being great from Demon's Souls onwards. Hidetaka Miyazaki has become the head figure for this now beloved style of oppressive, dark fantasy RPG, but the roots of it can be traced to a point far before his involvement.

King's Field IV is unmistakably a progenitor of Souls, from its surreal, dreamlike environments to the bizarre and often terrifying creatures that lurk throughout its dead world. Everything from NPC interactions (and their disturbing quest lines) to the little stones you use at a blacksmith to upgrade weapons has convinced me that Miyazaki’s contributions to FromSoftware do not come from the same places I thought they did.

Yes, the excellence of Demon’s Souls and the first Dark Souls were never the sole result of Miyazaki. FromSoftware has been doing this years and years before he was even an employee, and although I always knew Demon’s Souls was meant to be a King’s Field successor, I never realized that the thing I truly love this series for—its thick, unforgettable atmosphere—can contributed to the brilliance of the development team as a whole.

Yet no one remembers King’s Field IV. How could a game that features a world on par with what FromSoftware is acclaimed for receive no love from critics? It’s likely that the crux of its mediocre reception is the result of an audience that wasn't quite ready to make heads or tails of its abstract, dreamlike nature. It could also be due to its unforgiving gameplay or difficult controls.

No one believed in Miyazaki’s project when Demon’s Souls was in development, not even its publisher (Sony). Its launch in Japan was met coldly, and in an alternate timeline, it would have never been brought to the states. If it wasn’t for Atlus publishing Demon’s Souls due to its understanding of the game’s brilliance—effectively forcing it into the West’s hands with admirable enthusiasm—it would have been forgotten.

This is exactly what King’s Field IV is: FromSoftware’s forgotten masterpiece. If you’re a fan of early Souls, particularly the worlds of Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls, and can bear a fair bit of mechanical jank, do yourself a service and experience it for yourself. You will not regret it.

I actually don't think the levels here are that big of a dip from the base game. Some of them are pretty great and I like the new mechanics introduced, especially when trying to get the fastest runs possible.

But the bossfight is a mess. It's too ambitious without the best part of this game: actually speed-running. The boss is broken up into three phases, and it resets your time after each phase, but it's all stuffed into one level. It would've made more sense to make it three separate levels and then allow users to speedrun them with leaderboards included. I was pretty surprised when I finished it and didn't have any time saved or leaderboards present, but I understand why that wouldn't be the case as it's broken as heck. The final phase doesn't reset properly, and the second phase is full of random deaths that I cannot explain. It was frustrating :(

The perfect game for people who love the idea of speed running but don't have the time or patience to commit to it on a massive scale. Clearing a PB and learning how to move through an area as fast as possible always seemed fun to me, and I loved watching streamers do what I couldn't.

Cyber Hook presents a similar feeling in 30~ second areas rather than a 2-8 hour game. Learning the game's physics and how to make the most of its speed and gravity is at the core of what makes it fun, and as you strive for top plays, you realize how thoughtful the placements of each hook point and platform is to accommodate absurd plays.

I love the puzzle-esque sensation of figuring out optimized ways to move forward, and all the diverse paths one can take to do so. I spent the last week going back and forth with a friend, spending hours at a time just to get a millisecond faster than him in a single level. Definitely the most competitive I've been in a game in years.

Great game, I'm helplessly addicted.

I have vivid childhood memories of Jak and Daxter: A bizarre arsenal of futuristic guns, a dark and desert-y open-world, a sci-fi looking car you’d race with, and combat challenges I’d always have trouble completing. I was more into Ratchet & Clank back then, but I was looking forward to my first step in revisiting this franchise nonetheless.

Imagine my surprise when that’s not what Jak and Daxter’s first outing ever looked like. Instead of an edgy third-person shooter, The Precursor Legacy is a lighthearted platformer collectathon. No crazy guns, no super-speedy car, and no dark narrative. It’s not like I never played The Precursor Legacy, but it’s clear now that most of my memories stem from Jak II and III, as I don’t remember anything from this game outside of the opening cutscene.

I think my betrayed expectations ruined this game’s opening for me, as I played for about twenty minutes on my first day before calling it quits. But if you're somehow in the same boat as me, please give this game another chance: It is absolutely lovely.

The Precursor Legacy understands its goals and accomplishes what it sets out to do excellently. The platforming mechanics are surprisingly tight, and although you can’t pull off particularly crazy stunts, it feels wonderful to control. The game’s environments are striking and utilize widely varied color palettes, architectural inspirations and different aspects of nature to channel drastically different tones one after another.

Whether it be a snowy mountain, a spider-infested cave deep underground, an unbearable bog swamp, or a submerged facility deep within the ocean, I was engrossed area after area. But these zones aren’t just wonderful aesthetic shifts. They introduce new mechanics and methods of progressing that constantly kept the flow of gameplay engaging, and I loved how some areas were entirely non-linear.

The Precursor Legacy might be the first time I fully understand why finding collectibles in these games is so fun. There’s a great balance here between the stuff you can find easily and the things you need to do some extra digging for, and Naughty Dog managed to make every single one accomplishable without requiring in-depth game knowledge. I collected all 101 Power Cells without ever resorting to Google’s help, which is rare for me because I'm a dummy.

The Precursor Legacy feels like a natural evolution of Naughty Dog’s brand at the time. The goofball nature of Crash Bandicoot is maintained quite well here, and even gameplay wise, it’s pretty much just taking what that series did and evolving it into full 3D environments.

While I did find the mini-games to be largely unfun, my biggest issue with The Precursor Legacy is that at no point did I particularly care for this “world." The characters aren’t charming, Daxter is a creepy little perv, the environments feel like disconnected (but good) levels within a video game, and the idea of Jak & Daxter has little meaning to me right now. I was thoroughly disengaged during every cutscene here and none of the comedic dialogue hit.

I care more about The Precursor Legacy as an experience itself than I care about Jak & Daxter as a brand, franchise, or iconic duo. It is well-made, tons of fun and ended up being one of the better collectathons I’ve played. Seriously recommend this :)

Atomic Heart deserves the numerous controversies and criticisms lobbed at it, but it is a fascinating experience nonetheless. Each contrived narrative beat, confusing line of dialogue and striking aesthetic choice rests anywhere between inspired, baffling, or completely unhinged.

The protagonist is obnoxious, foul-mouthed and never stops talking, the game is ripe with sexual iconography and uncomfortable explicit scenes, and a majority of the cinematics look stiff and robotic. Yet when the game's most compelling visual moments are front and center, it is unforgettable.

I started Atomic Heart passionately despising the main character’s childish arguments with his talking glove. But by the end I found myself listening carefully whenever the two delivered long-form exposition regarding the narrative conflicts, with some end-game arguments in particular really catching my ear.

I also started the game uncomfortable by the protagonist's complete passiveness towards the situation unfolding around him (robots murdering everyone), with him and his A.I. companion spouting all sorts of mindless propaganda that (I assumed) was played too straight to be an intentional aspect of the narrative. But by the end, I cannot help but respect how hard the writers went into the extremity of the main character's brainwashing, regardless of how much of an idiot he is.

And I cannot even for a second begin to unravel the obsession with sex in Atomic Heart. What the fuck was with what vending machine? Why did they make that character so gross and weird? In the same vein, I was expecting to despise the Twins due to their male-gazey design and the bizarre manner in which they move about, but by their second cinematic, I was completely on board witnessing an overlong ritual depicting a monstrous ceremony reminiscent of eldritch horror. That cutscene had my eyes widened and jaw dropped for four minutes straight. I will never forget it.

Is Atomic Heart's story poorly told and executed? Absolutely! Was I gripped throughout every moment of it, attentively listening to each conversation and enjoying the various bits of (admittedly bizarre) worldbuilding? Yes, I did! As a result, I cannot comment on the whether or not I like this story. I could probably say I'm fond of it, but I don't think I ever will be able to come to a definitive conclusion. I came away from the game speechless.

My speechlessness is (obviously) no result of excellency: A majority of the performances lack emotional poignance, certain elements of the open-world design are lackluster and the story is probably really bad in actuality (regardless of how much its strangeness makes me fond of it). Certain fights frustrated me, climbing is super janky, there are tons of weird bugs and dumb ways to get stuck, the main character is immensely annoying, and some side content feels repetitive. The ending is also terrible, quickly undoing the few good things this script accomplishes.

But Atomic Heart is also full of stuff I wholeheartedly love. Mick Gordon's soundtrack is phenomenally thrilling, enhancing the tension of each gunfight tenfold, alongside a great use of classic Russian music (and their respective remixes). Environments boast an intoxicating abstract beauty, enemies move and attack in weird and fun ways, and the moment-to-moment gunplay feels tight and impactful. This is only enhanced by the expectation to constantly dodge, slash and use utility abilities.

I played on the Armageddon difficulty and adored how much bullshit I was able to pull off. Rotating between my electric shock, shield and freeze abilities while hacking enemies to bits with a machete even though I had 300 shotgun shells in my pocket was inexplicably satisfying. And when battles did get really difficult, pulling out my array of weaponry and just going ham while dodging lasers, projectiles, and bombs was so much fun.

Alongside a series of visually incredible bosses with attack animations comparable to a choreographed dance (which makes sense considering theater is a big part of this game), these glimpses of controlled chaos brought me back to the simple joys of Doom Eternal (although Atomic Heart offers a mere shadow of how good that game gets).

So yes, I’m pretty conflicted. This game deserves the hate, but I am so glad I gave it a try despite how much bad press it got. By no means do I love what Mundfish has crafted here, yet I feel as if I will never quite forget Atomic Heart.

Sincerely heartbroken. I haven't been subjected to a AAA game this broken, unfinished, visually incoherent and unfun in a good few years. It especially stings as Arkane is one of my favorite developers working. Prey, Deathloop and the Dishonored series as a whole (alongside Arx Fatalis) are incredible, so it pains me to see the studio come out with an experience this dreadful...

Sigh...

Edit: On further reflection, Redfall is the worst AAA game I've played. Whew.