a game that i will always adore. it's impossible to divorce this game from how it made me feel playing it as a 5 year old, and any time i replay this game, that precious joy is evoked. level design peaked here with levels that end up being the perfect length so they don't overstay their welcome, and the variety of levels aids this game, despite what popular modern consensus says. i do share the sentiment that they could've likely cut off a jet ski and motorcycle level or two to make room for another platforming level, but my playthroughs of this game never leave me feeling unsatisfied. i especially love how time trials are handled here, as the changes in boxes and added element of time stopping radically change how you'd view a level compared to the initial run.

i dunno man! i just love this game. i love the level themes, i love the bosses, i love the music, i love the graphics. . . it's just one of my favorite games i've ever played. i have very little negative things to say about this game, and i can only say that there will always be a deep reservoir of love in my heart for this thing.

Adastra is such a curious case. A project spearheaded by the writer of Echo, joined by Haps' wonderful art and Anthemics' utterly beautiful musical prowess, that somehow manages to fumble the ball over and over. Adastra is interesting in that it serves a fiery romance and a dramatic plot weaving between complex in-universe politics that are incredible as long as you don't look at it for more than 5 seconds.

I'm sure every furry has dreamed of a large, muscular, protective wolf man (or whatever species you fancy) whisking them away from their exhausting, monotonous life to shower them in unconditional love and care for your every need. Who wouldn't want that LMAO. It's all fun and games, however, until said wolf man is kidnapping you to make you his (sex) slave in an imperial colonial empire. I cannot understate how miserable this premise is to an Indigenous person playing this game, let alone a reasonable human being.

And interestingly enough, I find that this premise actually embodies the core of this visual novel's structural issues which are visible in every facet of its creation: Adastra wants wish fulfillment without actually thinking about the logistics required to create it.

You can easily look at every decision written and find that it was done for arousal first, coherence second. Adastra wants the reader to be surrounded by hot, half-naked furry men, so we're going to have a setting reminiscent of ancient Rome where men wear loincloths, communal nudity is common, and women's societal oppression allows them to be irrelevant in this story. To have this version of Rome, it'll be located in outer space where alien societies resemble human cultures. And to have that work, we'll say that every culture on Earth was actually the result of all these aliens colonizing humans at some point and teaching them how to be civilized. Yup, the aliens taught people how to make the pyramids; surely that's an interesting and not at all racially insensitive trope that's been historically used to diminish Black and Indigenous people's intelligence! The main character being designated as a slave (or, "pet," as it's referred to) is similarly just to indulge in a submissive vs dominant power fantasy.

I must give credit that the Roman-era setting, with all its societal misgivings and issues, makes for a fantastic drama that Howly makes excellent use of to keep you on your toes as you read. The political intrigue and tension throughout this story brought on by the issues in this world, issues that are far too great for any one person or group of people can even hope to stand a chance against, is downright enthralling. The interpersonal politics driving every character's actions are so powerful they would bring telenovelas on their knees. This is part of what made Echo so great and is honestly what makes Adastra memorable moreso than its romantic aspects. This sort of conflict between societal norms and personal desires is what Howly does best in my opinion. If Adastra weren't a romance, and instead solely a political drama around queer men in ancient Rome, then I think this story wouldn't have given me the distaste it did.

Now, to be honest, I think I could look past this story's many... many........... MANY misgivings if the romance was actually good. But it just isn't. I despise Amicus, and I'm not sure how I couldn't given how he's written! He's a selfish, entitled brat who can't think for himself, dodges any sort of responsibility, and is just a whiney baby that you're supposedly head over heels in love with because at the end of the day he's just a big dumb puppy :3. Your heckin' doggo is committing human rights violations and upholding the status quo, Johnathan.

From the start to the end, Amicus is downright unpleasant to be around at best and a literal manipulator at worst. The main character is less of a lover to Amicus and more a mother, having to care for his every need, comfort his every tantrum (and there are a lot of them), and clean up every one of his messes. In the story's biggest climax, it's the protagonist who takes the biggest fall for what is ultimately Amicus's problem and it's the protagonist who has to save himself while Amicus sits there and cries. Zero character development with zero redeeming traits. Genuinely what am I supposed to like about this guy. If Amicus broke into my home in the dead of night I'd have beat him with hammers I can tell you that much.

Shoutout to Neferu, though, he's a real one.

Now, with all that said, i think the background behind Adastra's development offers some explanation for why it is the way it is. I remember being a Patreon supporter back in 2018 and reading that the writer was experiencing difficulties and burnout with writing. Adastra was that oil to the rusting door, a place to let loose and get the rhythm going. In that regard, I'm thankful that Adastra had to take the bullet as Echo just got better and better from this point on. It's unfortunate, then, that Adastra became such a wild hit, dwarfing Echo in attention and becoming what Echo Project would be known for to most people for the next several years. The precedents set by Adastra's success would go on to irreparably change the furry visual novel scene, for better or for worse, and open up the wider furry community into its second big visual novel boom.

the way people talk about BOTW/TOTK in terms of the sense of adventure is how i felt about this game.

a massive improvement over the first go, possibly among the biggest jumps in quality from one entry to the next in gaming at large for me?

puts its own spin on the already great presentation from the first game (aesthetics, music, the full package) while offering less frustrating gameplay whether it was the movement or combat.

some of the best world design that i can think of from the past decade or so. characters, locations, or otherwise. it was all so wonderful.

katamari damacy is a very easy game to undervalue. there's likely a decent portion of people who have gone "oh so this is just a quirky game about rolling a ball around to grab stuff? okay" or something to that effect, and disregarded the game. it's very hard to pitch the game without gameplay footage to complement; telling a coworker about this game reminded me of trying to sell someone on ace attorney being fun in spite of its droll-sounding premise. yet, even with this obstacle, i can safely say that this game might be the single most widely appealing and approachable game on the PS2's library short of tetris ports.

this is a deceptively simple game that focuses on doing one thing, and doing it superbly: movement. it is in its precise focus on movement that anyone can enjoy this game while still leaving a high skill ceiling and appropriate challenges to match. truthfully, i think this is a very, very easy game to sit down and beat. if you're just going for the minimum size requirements, even a bad player could swing that, give or take a handful of retries. meanwhile, for anyone who wants to really challenge themselves, the game has comet times, size thresholds, and collection aspects to tickle the brain. and while i think all three of those could use more transparency for the player in plainly stating what they're asking for, that simultaneously lends itself to this mystique that katamari damacy's aesthetic thrives on. i do want the raw numbers, but also, i kind of love that the king of all cosmos will just go "that's a 4/10" and belabor the point by saying he would've done it much better instead of telling you what size would satisfy him.

there's something to be said about what katamari damacy feels like to experience. clinically, i don't think i could name a game that utilizes sound design in a more synapse-stimulating way. this goes beyond the soundtrack, which is immaculate. rolling over objects is accompanied by this extremely memorable sound that i struggle to describe. it sounds like if you were to fire a rubber band at a giant plate of jello. it's minor, but considering all you are doing in the game is moving to collect things, making the act of collecting have an intrinsically pleasing sound is an elegant way to elevate it. and the moment-to-moment gameplay of scanning for both objects your size to get right then while also looking for objects bigger than you to hunt for later as goals is diabolically brilliant design. the player makes both conscious and unconscious decisions about what to preoccupy themselves with and what to work towards. the magic is that it's done instantly and often without the player even realizing how they're being conditioned. katamari damacy doesn't fatigue the player with analysis paralysis, because it immediately makes it apparent that you want to get shit, and you want to constantly be in the process of getting shit.

as for collecting itself, many objects will have sounds that play when you get them, adding to that feedback loop. you roll up an egg and boom, a little chickling briefly hatches and peeps a bit. you roll up a truck and you can bet you're gonna hear its horn. this even extends to people when you roll them up, and often the most fun part of any given level is when you get big enough to roll up random civilians and hear their associated voice lines when you get them. whether it's random teenage girls who give their all in screaming, old men who have no earthly idea what's going on and just moan a little in confusion, or the Towel Guy who makes this sound that easily puts him in contention for most lgbt character of all time. sometimes the fun of the game is not only seeing what you can roll up, but how it will react to you.

and while the game does have only 3 main areas, the structure of each level greatly varies. you could have one level in the house where you're just collecting random household objects like food and legos and then the next level in that same house you're suddenly swarmed with crabs to collect. something i appreciated on this replay was how dollhouse-esque this game's levels feel in their arrangement. they have this exactness to them where you can feel the dev team telling their little stories through object and people placement. it all feels so neatly arranged and deliberate, and it creates this reptilian brain response of wanting to destroy something delicate when you arrive on the scene. people lowball this game a lot and chalk up its appeal to being this silly and quirky game with not much to it, but i think that greatly does a disservice to the intentionality behind the design choices here. katamari damacy organically fosters a curiosity to its world in a way that appears effortless. all of this is done without dialogue or lore drops, just visual arrangement and responsivity to player actions. it's a masterclass.

it feels very surreal to say that this game turned 20 this year. i still vividly remember the toonami mini-review of this game when it was new. i don't want to make this about how i'm getting older, things are aging, and the like, because there's no real place for it here. i don't think katamari damacy has aged in really appreciable, significant ways. there's an evergreen quality here that will never have an expiration date. the simple nature of its gameplay lends itself to this timeless quality. moreover, we're never going to reach a point in the medium where movement becomes something dated. movement will always be inherently part of any game with a world to explore and play in. katamari damacy may not have been planning for the future with its laser-focus on a game purely based around movement, but it is one that has aged better than anyone could've speculated. this is a perfect game in that sense, and it's one of the first things that i would nominate we encase in steel and eject into space to preserve it for future civilizations and species.

I've become convinced that there is no way to substantially improve this game, and/or its story, without drastically altering the final product and its core identity for the worse. If Spike Chunsoft's Danganronpa series is an exploration of character relationships dynamics at its most hyperbolic and brash, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors explores those same dynamics with the tact of a carefully crafted pressurized chamber. There are so many moments within each stroke and line that are created with the sole intent of increasing the dread between two characters, whether by sowing discord or pulling them together amidst almost certain death. The tension isn't overbearing at first but it builds and towers into this monolith of anxiety, to the point where its true finale brought me to tears on my first playthrough.

That's not to discount the gameplay, which is in effect perfected (for the most part) in the PC port but is just as gripping and fun in the original DS version. It's the type of escape room puzzling that I absolutely adore, fully realized and made even more gripping with the eclectic ways you craft solutions. Combining objects, altered arithmetic, careful dialogue traversal, it's all so wild and fresh as someone who plays around with this genre as a matter of habit, let alone taste—it makes me wonder just how much more developed this idea of room traversal and additive puzzle-solving can get if this game is the best I've seen the genre offer. It's such a shot of euphoria peeking through each individual notch in this labyrinth of rooms, putting together pieces and creating more puzzles. It's this type of design that makes me swoon and weep for more of its kind, even as the escape room genre wanes in its popularity little by little every year. This is the type of puzzle game I fucking adore, concentrated and purified to such an extent that replaying it was an immediate rush of dopamine and anxiety.

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

Bonus Definitive Edition content:
Limited Run Games is genuinely one of the most poorly managed companies on earth and I will never forgive them for giving me a PS5 copy of Cthulhu Saves Christmas instead of what I had actually ordered, a System Shock boxart poster. They also keep sending me extra copies of Jeremy Parish's books. Please, I do not need three copies of Virtual Boy Works.

I'm not going to give this like a half star and say it's demon spawn from the depths of this industry or something like that. I think there's a reason why so many people immediately latched onto this thing because there's the potential of this thing being another survival game with a unique hook that could last for hours upon hours while standing out from the likes of your typical Minecraft, Valheim, ARK, etc kinda games. But I don't think that product is fully here yet, and I'm wary of whether or not Pocketpair will capitalize on their ridiculous massive success with this thing. Craftopia hasn't been abandoned necessarily but it's been in early access for 3 years now with no clear signs of leaving anytime soon, and this is another title on top of that one.

I'm also not going to dismiss this game because of concerns about generative AI; I don't like generative AI assets one bit and the CEO of the company being a moron is concerning, but there aren't any signs of actual assets made by AI being in the game itself. This feels like a product made by proper human hands, just without a care for trying to actually hide the blatant subjects that it's ripping off. Nobody is being fooled by the Pokemon here, and I think Pocketpair was fully aware of it and fully played into it as a selling point, and I think it worked in their favor.

But I'm going to refund the game because while I see the ground works of what could be something much more extensive and potentially special, it's only if Pocketpair can actually prove they weren't in over their heads with this. I would rather play something like Valheim for now with the more extensive progression and building mechanics that game has, let alone the sheer amount of polish that has over this. There's something about the game and knowing at least some of the previous history behind the company that makes me wary about giving into the hype of yet another early access game this early on that made me feel kind of weird and icky after a few hours of playing, that I probably should've spent the $26 bucks on something like Prince of Persia instead and let this one settle on where it's going before I really get invested. I'm not completely passing on this one, but I'm giving it like a good 6 months or so before I consider eyeing it up again.

you know, i get it. for most of my adult life, i've mourned the SSX series and waited like a coiled spring for a new game. granted, i never played any of the entries after this one, but, to be fair, they all looked like microwaved dogshit. still, i've waited for a true sequel to this game for so long. and i do finally understand why we haven't gotten it and never will. it is frankly just too fucking difficult to iterate on this game. from top to bottom, this game is mechanically dense and full of little refinements and tweaks to the SSX formula that i can't see being improved upon. you could try, sure, but it'd be a fool's errand. this was the peak of SSX. this was the furthest the series could go. it was a funeral for the series. but it was also a celebration for the series.

i used to be someone who thought SSX Tricky was the ever-so-slightly better entry, but now that feels like a borderline offensive opinion to throw out. SSX Tricky is a fantastic, outstanding game. but does it push as many boundaries of game design like 3? does it manage to add a superior level of complexity to preexisting mechanics in a way that feels like a natural evolution like 3? hell, does it even have the better OST? all these years, I used to think these questions weighed in Tricky's favor. i just can't see it now. (that said, i still absolutely crave the remix of "Smartbomb" on Tricky's OST on spotify. i need it badly.)

SSX 3 is a landmark game in what it achieves as early as 2003, but it remains a landmark game in how well it's aged and managed to still be fresh to play. i know everyone gushes about it, but it truly is impressive as all fuck to be able to start at the top of peak 3 and go through six different and varied courses and end all the way at the bottom of peak 1 without a single load screen from the word go.

the loss in vibrancy, cartoonishness, and informed personality does hurt, and it's always been my biggest sticking point with the game. yeah, all of Tricky's cast fucking annihilates the newcomers here and all the returnees feel like they've been sand-papered down to a less distinct and memorable edge. i can completely concede that. but, the game puts emphasis on characterizing the different tracks of the game. there's nothing quite as outlandish as aloha ice jam or outright impossible as tokyo megaplex, but we trade that for grounded fantasies. look at something like ruthless. ruthless is absolute eye-candy for anyone who has an appreciation for nature, but it also has this horrific realism to it in that you could easily imagine it claiming the lives of reckless newcomers every year. sure, you're still hitting rails at lightning speed and regularly doing jumps that should shatter femurs, but the style shift to realism makes it feel more memorable and weighty.

all this is to say that i can't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers Tricky. at this point, i've seen approximately 0 people ever argue either of these games are bad, so it feels as though it's a continuous argument between which of these two games is the more definitive entry. forgive me, but i'm going to use a fairly nebbish final argument for my position. we've had sequel after sequel for SSX 3 try to take the series in a new direction and each has ultimately failed. most tellingly, none of these games have tried to claim the mantle of SSX 4. and how could you? how could you ever claim to iterate on SSX 3 when it captured the formula, the gameplay, the design, everything so well? there has never been anything like this game since its release, and, at this point, it's starting to look more and more certain that there never will be.

personally, i would love to play SSX 4. i just expect that if i ever do, it won't be called that. the series is dead, and i say that with reverence.

There's a review on this website by RealmW;

"Whatever redeemable qualities Anarcute has (already few and far between) are completely lost within the void of its intensely cynical non-ideology. Revolutionary aestheticism, combined with a total refusal to engage with the subject of those aesthetics, results in a text with nothing to say--doing no favors to the foundation laid by a shallow and frequently frustrating gameplay loop."

These criticisms are valid, and at one point I did hold basically the same view (I'm not trying to rag on this user at all), but I have a hard time getting upset at this game for two primary reasons:

1) It would imply that there is a consumption of media that would have meaningful political impact. Disco's been out for years, Mother 3 has a character in Smash Bros, the idea that there could be some sort of revolutionary "game", especially such a singular experience like all the two above and Anarcute isn't a stance I hold.

2) That critique made more sense within the 2016 context of a """left""" that's influx of new believers came from western social democratic movements and were largely unfamiliar with anti-capitalist ideology. That's not me talking shit, I was a Bernie baby myself. I think within the past seven years, the amount of resources and general perception of these ideological movements buffers out whatever ideological drift the 2016 game "Anarcute" could have pulled off.

I bring these up, not as a means to attack that user, but to pad out the review of this otherwise very average game. I wanted something chaotic, like Katamari Damacy, and instead the game focused way too hard on specific level gimmicks instead of "you control the therian wave as they burn cop cars". It's commentary is so shallow that it comes off as totally inoffensive, and the soundtrack also leaves just as much of a mark. The minor conversation around this game is much more interesting than the end product.

is it a faux pas to say that sports games used to be really fun and do well with the nerd crowd? sure, your older brother and all his friends loved tony hawk's pro skater, but there's an enduring audience of people who still talk about and play these games to an insanely technical degree. you don't see the same level of adoration and dedication for games like FIFA and whatever the fuck else franchise sports games there are that just exist for celebrity appearances. the biggest separation between sports games back then and sports games now is the eschewing of realism in favor of over-the-top antics. the decision to say that realism fails where style succeeds. and, if nothing else, SSX Tricky has stood the test of time and shown that it is the ur example of realism not mattering.

if anything, trying to emulate reality is what has likely stagnated the sports genre to the degree where sports games are now synonymous with cosplaying as the new york mets. there's no fun, no invigorating "larger than life" attitude. just. . . egotism. why would i want to play something like soccer in a conventional way when games like SSX Tricky show that creativity is just around the corner, just a little bit past grounding? you can see indie titles take advantage of not being beholden to realism and succeed as a result (i.e. rocket league, pyre, etc.). i don't think there's anything wrong with realism in sports games, but when it's the only thing we're given, i feel starved of nourishment.

if nothing else, playing this game feels like a thick, cold slushie on a warm summer day. it's a treat i allow myself once in a blue moon to remind myself that there are sweet things in this world, you just have to look for them.