After getting my Switch on launch along with Breath of the Wild, I was excited to see what games the console would have in the future. I bought Master Blaster Zero and eventually The Binding of Isaac for the third time, but a month and a half later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. Now look, this may be a rerelease and all but it was for a portable console. Mario Kart 8 was great but I could only play it at home and with a game like Mario Kart, its more fun to play it on the go with friends. When this came out, I was nearing the end of my Junior year in High School. Let me tell you, me and my friends played this all the time during the span of the rest of my high school experience. We played it in lunch, we played it in study hall, we even played it in class whether it was sneaking it or just when we had free time. This was THE Switch game to play when it came to my friend group alongside Jackbox Party Pack 3. It's just a ton of fun and while I said it was a rerelease, it's not just a lazy port. They not only included the DLC tracks, but they also added some new characters and revamped the battle mode.

I said the character selection was a bit lacking in the original game but the ones they added here are all good. Bowser Jr, King Boo and Dry Bones are all good additions that were in past games. The completely brand-new addition tho is Inkling Girl/Boy. Now, I was a huge Splatoon 1 fan before this so I was hyped when they were added. I mained them a lot when I first played and honestly, they're a perfect crossover addition just cuz Splatoon was originally supposed to be a Mario game which I found funny. This isn't even getting into the characters they added from the booster course pass. Most of those are also great, tho I haven't used them myself since I don't own the booster courses. If you do though, easily the best roster in the series.

The other thing they fixed of course is the battle mode. Easily the worst part of the original game and the worst battle mode I've played, it's really good here. Not as good as Mario Kart DS since there's still no option to have it be elimination rules, however you're not forced into teams like Wii and there's a whopping 5 modes this time around. Balloon battle and coin runners are classics of course. Shine thief makes a return and it's also pretty fun here. Bob-omb blast apparently originated from Double Dash and that's also fun tho definitely the most chaotic of the bunch. The brand new mode this time around is renegade roundup and its basically cops and robbers. Pretty fun mode as well but the real reason these are all actually fun is they gave us battle courses again THANK GOD. The old courses are great and some of the new courses are awesome too like Urchin Underpass. Love to see a little Splatoon representation since it didn't get a race track.

So there you go, the character selection was expanded and while not my favorite battle mode, the battle mode was made actually fun again. The only other thing they added, and they added it 5 years after deluxe came out, are the booster courses. Now I don't own them but my good friend Quent has the expansion pass so along with him and my friend wheatie, we played a bunch of online races for this review and I was able to play pretty much all the courses I wanted to. I didn't play them all but I can see the course quality varies greatly. You have some really half assed tracks and then you have really great ones like Yoshi's Island or SNES Bowser's Castle. A lot of the returning ones are Wii courses which is a plus too. Obviously most of these are just straight up ported from Tour and the visuals on a lot of them are pretty unacceptable compared to the base game but, if you don't care about then then the value of 48 tracks for $25 is great. That's basically 50 cents a track plus the added characters. Not only that but they added the ability to choose custom items, plus a music player in the main menu.

With the slightly better character roster and the MUCH better battle mode, I can say this is definitely THE definite Mario Kart. Though I may end up liking Wii a tad bit more now due to it's wacky physics. Either way, definitely a must have as a Switch owner and as a Mario Kart fan.

Well, that's the end of the Mario Kart marathon everyone unless I end up actually playing Tour lol. Been playing Persona 3 FES this whole time alongside these games and I'm in December now so I think I'm nearing the end of it, stay tuned for that review!

Yoko Taro's NieR: Automata is a game that I've been aware of ever since it came out due to me watching Dunkey's video on it once or twice, but I didn't get the urge to actually go out of my way to play it until years later. Since I've mostly been focusing my attention on games from the 7th console generation and everything that came out before it, I put my search for a copy of NieR: Automata on hold for the time being, but when a friend of mine lent me her copy of the game back in December (shoutout to Catherine, by the way), I knew that it was the first thing I wanted to do when I got back to York in January. After spending a week beating the game's three main paths across a total of just under 23 hours, I can safely say that NieR: Automata blew me away on every level, and even with all of the praise that has been built up for it over the years, I really didn't expect to love it as much as I did.

Since God Hand is currently my fifth favorite game of all time, I was really interested to see what a studio originally comprised of people who worked on that game would be able to come up with on their own, and while I didn't actually realize that NieR: Automata was made by PlatinumGames until I actually booted it up for the first time, I don't think I could've asked for a better introduction to their body of work. In terms of its core gameplay, NieR: Automata works wonders as a hack-&-slash character action game that's equal parts hectic and buttery-smooth, as the amount of mechanics to manage and aggressive machines to keep track of made each enemy encounter feel just as exciting and tense as the last, and I found myself constantly countering moves and unleashing combos that were incredibly satisfying to pull off successfully. The game's implementation of RPG elements worked really well alongside this, with the unique plug-in chip upgrades feeling varied in their uses while also making my own approach to combat feel personalized. NieR: Automata was also very admirable in how willing it was to branch out and go beyond its respective genre, as its massive sense of scale was achieved brilliantly through its implementation of shoot 'em up and even text adventure sections throughout its more conventional character action missions. On top of just feeling great on their own, the slick, responsive controls made me appreciate the game's gorgeous artstyle and world design, and travelling around the game's open world made me feel just as excited to see all of the new, dilapidated vistas as it made me anticipate whatever new loot or sidequests came my way. Keiichi Okabe's phenomenal score is very easily one of the very best video game scores I've heard in a long time, as his music perfectly captures the melancholic, yet grandiose and profoundly emotional tone of the game itself.

NieR: Automata was one of those games where every element on display was terrific in its execution, but one element that especially impressed me would be its writing. Across its multiple pathways and shifts in perspective, NieR: Automata explores densely philosophical themes such as what it means to be human, the motivations that fuel violence and war, and the value of our own individual lives, and its navigation of these topics through the increasingly fractured psychology of its main cast was riveting. The story itself was already compelling in its twists, turns, and overwhelming sense of loss and tragedy, but the layers of existentialism that grew more prevalent as the game went on made for some outright heartbreaking moments, and it all made the game's stakes feel heavy and palpable. The game's structure involving multiple playthroughs worked really well for me, with the slight shifts and additions in gameplay being welcome changes that were a perfect fit for the recontextualization of certain events, motivations, and reveals. There's no doubt in my mind that NieR: Automata was one of the very best games I have ever played, and not only do I want to play what directly preceded it, NieR, but I also want to eventually play the game that NieR was a spinoff of, Drakengard.

I've been meaning to write a proper review for this for years (and I'm still planning to), but I think Hattori's review is pretty much spot-on, especially as a rebuttal to some of the more low-hanging criticisms I've seen floating around. It is pretty clear that Automata is the kind of game where you either vibe with the (categorically uncool, decidedly no-good) idiosyncrasies of its director Yoko Taro—world-renowned scoundrel and self-professed creator of "weird games for weird people"—or you don't. As for me, I'm not ashamed to admit that the tonal, thematic, and emotional registers explored in both of the mainline NieR games have pretty much conquered my soul. All-encompassing sadness interlaced with the grotesque and the absurd, but also full of heart and empathy where it counts—that's my shit right there. Incidentally, ⁠I was originally drawn to the world of NieR after spontaneously giving the Automata soundtrack a spin and just instantly clicking with it on a fundamental level—in fact, I'd say the music is such an integral and representative part of the experience that you can likely skip this game if listening to a track like "City Ruins" doesn't immediately make you want to fuck off to some forlorn corner of the world and weep for the soul of humanity. And trust me, weep I shall, seeing to what extent lewd fanart of the ostensible protagonist is stealing the public spotlight away from the actual, real star of the game: the Small Stubby Machine.

My sincerest apologies fellow Taro heads, but this is my favorite one. Nier Automata is the inevitable conclusion that the series has been working towards to, with the actors of the stage play set by its predecessors finally rebelling against the 4th wall and breaking past this ever beautiful aging artform we love. Videogame characters being aware that they are inside a videogame is nothing new, but Nier Automata masterfully utilizes ever interactive system, device, mechanic and language at its disposal to bring new life to this concept and create an incredible purposeful metanarrative that could only work within the limitations of the medium and nowhere else.

Utilizing videogame conventions and expectations to frame its story as one of existential crisis and nihilistic despair experienced by what could be the protagonists of any kind of shmup, a genre defined by its disregard for narrative context and its primordial struggle where the player throws themselves to death over and over again oblivious to such purpose, Automata pits its characters against the bleek reality devised for and enforced on them and instills a level of self awareness that brilliantly paints a baroque moving picture that paralels our own communial absurdity on this tiny rock floating in space. That same interactive narrative continues on outside of the 2D ships, where Drakengard 3's intertwining of violence with sexual drive is further expanded and improved upon in Automata through its combat design.

Just as the characters are built to derive pleasure from the killing, so too do we from the now immediate and highly satisfying stylish Platinum combat, and just as purpose and meaning starts to inevitably crumble in front of them, so too does the fighting quickly decline into Drakengard territory, as the non threatening and non hostile enemies fail to ilicit any desire for engagement. No better is this exemplified then by the shift from 2B's two weapon combo fare to 9S's stop and start combat that perfectly reflects his state of mind and increasing frustration that explodes at the tail end of the game. And at the peril of shooting myself in the foot and being sent to the internet gulags, even the much (deservedly so) maligned peek at 2B's undergarments ends up reinforcing through gameplay the protagonist's self awareness and rejection of player control.

Carrying on the post 9/11 sentiment of Nier, Automata from the outset presents "the Other" as the consequence and victim of an eternity of perpetual warfare born from a conflict that none of the current perpetrators remember or fight for, and through an engrossing narrative that constantly delivers devastating revelation after another that repeatedly shatter the character's sense of purpose and resolve, it takes the ethos of a greek tragedy and creates a fascinating dialogue between the player and the screen. Route B and C provide the best use of sequential playthroughs in the series that cleverly switch between numerous point of views and further hammers home the theatricality of the game's construct, with 9S especially being a standout case with his pechant for breaking the boundaries of the game with his 4th wall breaking quips and hacking mechanics that ultimately make him the most vulnerable to the reality of the fiction he lives in. A world screaming out of the edges of the monitor, trapped in a nightmare of their own making and restricted by our very own code.

And that finale. That fuckin finale. What a glorious and exuberant display of love and admiration for the power of videogames and its capability to unite the world with empathy and optimism through a beautiful message of perserverance and struggle that only this artform knows how to deliver. Constantly do I see Automata criticized for being filled with philosophy name drops and references, implying an "emperor has no clothes" sort of deal that aspires to a pretense at depth, an odd critique that I fail to understand when the game consistently mocks said name drops and references and doesn't treat that lack of subtlety in the same manner as something like MGSV did with Moby Dick or 1984. If after witnessing that ending, you still believe that the philosophy musings aren't just the coat of paint through which the world of Automata communicates its message and are instead the focal point of the game, you my friend, have missed the forest for the trees. And I love how Automata's callback to Nier's final sacrifice gains a new whole meaning by its more open optionality.

Could go on about the perfect use of dynamic soundtracking, the cohesive selection of side quests that explore the game's ideas from numerous angles and humorous vignettes, or the clever use of achievements, but I guess I just did so time to wrap it up. I'm sorry the normiecore took this franchise from you, I truly am. But you wanted a new MGS2, right? Well, you got it. This is it.

Uhhh this kind of rules?

Look, I have no delusions about being cool. When I was a kid, my dad was getting his PhD until I was like 9 years old, so I often found myself killing time in empty classrooms on Oklahoma University campus. That meant 30-60 minutes of just me and some chalkboards. For most kids, I assume that would mean a whole bunch of doodling. But for this radical 90s youth, it meant coming up with the most complicated long division problems I could and seeing how fast I could solve them.

I think basic math is fun! Sue me! My wife and I often watch 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and compete with each other for points throughout the episode. The 2-player mode of DK Jr. Math gave me the same vibes, but with some NES jank thrown in, and being limited to using single-digit numbers for each step of your equation. I had a great time!

The single-player mode was extremely anxiety-inducing at first while I tried to figure out if I remembered how to do this kind of math without being able to write down remainders, but once I got the hang of it, I knew this was exactly the kind of edutainment that little Alex would have loved. This is absolutely not for everyone, but tiny geeks and nerds (both currently and formerly tiny) will have a blast.

Everything, everything
Everything, everything
In its right place, in its right place
In its right place, in its right place

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon, yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon, yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon

Everything, everything
Everything
In its right place, in its right place
Right place

There are two colours in my head, there are two colours in my head
What, what is that you tried to say? What, what was that you tried to say?
Tried to say, tried to say, tried to say, tried to say

Everything
Everything
Everything
Everything

As a kid, I was absolutely obsessed with subways. Whenever my family and I traveled to a new city, my immediate fixation was not the city’s many attractions but rather the intricate infrastructure linking all these various locales. While my family handled the destinations, I handled everything in-between. I wanted to know the most efficient way to get from point A to B, if there were any loopholes or special conditions necessitating an off-the-beaten-path itinerary, and most of all, I kept tabs on any planned changes regarding the evolving transportation so I could make notes of where to adjust and prioritize for future trips. I never realized it back then, but there was a certain satisfaction to memorizing every station and optimal route and running the simulations in my head that eventually led me down the path of engineering.

Mini Metro is essentially my childhood fascination with subways conceptualized as a video game. It’s super easy to pick up thanks to its minimalist design and intuitive controls; passengers are depicted with geometric symbols headed to corresponding symbolic destinations, distinctly colored subway lines are constructed by dragging your mouse between stops, and you can easily manipulate existing lines without disrupting progress by simply clicking and dragging sections of a line to new stops. At the same time, it can quickly become challenging, but this skill ceiling feels fairly approachable because the game is less about memorizing specific formulas and more about understanding implicit guidelines. For example, having a line that hits every stop in the area sounds appealing, but what’s less appealing is how much more time is subsequently spent traveling and loading/unloading passengers; you can at least somewhat account for this by toggling specific stations as “no-stop” to create express lines. The AI is fairly predictable and will always calculate the shortest path to the corresponding destination, but this also means that there’s real potential for them to overload the capacity of certain stations while in-transit between different lines. Alongside this, the game is great at organically iterating upon its basic formula to escalate difficulty by introducing more stops, altering the shape of stops to create more unique passengers and necessitate different routes, and increase the system’s load with more passengers while forcing the player to juggle their already limited number of lines, cars/carriages, and tunnels/bridges as also dictated with newly unlocked maps. At its core, it’s a game that’s great at subtly teaching players how to recognize bottlenecks and micromanage individual elements to fully understand how minor changes can quickly ripple across the fully intertwined system.

My only real nitpicks are that picking apart subway loops can get a bit annoying since you can only fiddle with one exposed end at a time while in loop form; it’s a minor complaint considering that you can pause the game at any time to more carefully reconstruct lines, but adding extra steps to reconstruct common subway loops is fairly noticeable considering Mini Metro’s elegant interface. Also, I do wish that there was a way to construct slightly longer paths along rivers instead of automatically building across them between certain junctions and using up my already limited supply of tunnels and bridges. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that this last gripe is mostly personal, and I think this game absolutely delivers upon its premise with precise execution. With so many different maps and daily challenges to boot, there’s plenty of content to exhaust within the game, and if one finds the basic experience too stressful or is more interested in sheer experimentation, then they can simply turn to endless and creative modes instead. For an accessible yet deceptively deep management game that gives great bang for your buck, I’d say Mini Metro is a fantastic entry point into the world of optimization simulators that more than holds its own against its more daunting peers.

"41205, just a number that I really like"

what the fuck was up with that ending ong like first you make me bawl like a baby and then you do that

ai the somniun files was on my watch for some time now due to me actually having been accustomed to kaname date porn on rule34 and actually wanting to explore more of this character apart from him getting railed like a slut

that being said this is an investigative game made with 2 dimes and a beer to anyone who's interested in doing the character animation which is very bare as I can tell but not for that reason less charming

while I do think this game has a lot of rough edges and the pacing isn't always the smoothest (just a few points though so nothing of note) this was such a fucking treat for its 20 hours runtime what the fucking hell

you play as date who's a hunk of a man absolutely delicious looking pervert tit aficionado part of the police department in the subunit of abis where they explore human minds through dreams via a machine that acts as a bridge for the investigator consciousness to creampie the host

that's easier when you play it than it is to explain it but basically this is just the usual excuse for some investigation tricks and minigames and a damn good plot device for the entirety of the mystery at hand I have never seen paprika till now even though I probably should but I think the main premise is basically the same but paprika doesn't have kaname date so clearly it's the lesser experience

now this plays a lot similar to a danganronpa game but without the over the top character designs and writing substituted by a more muted cast of characters who are some degree of insane or quirky or mad like the pretend they're not danganronpa characters but if you dig deep enough you will find that everyone can be matched with a character in danganronpa sick trick

you investigate you try to solve the mystery I don't have to tell you how a danganronpa game works the investigative parts are passable at best being more of a point and click affair more similar to a visual novel type of deal yknow ace attorney and shit and then the somnium segments who at first I thought were really good soon became a 999-puzzles type of deal where I just began to get irritated by them and look for a guide because they have no real cohesion whatsoever youre like lemme see what happens if I blow on this fan and then 120 seconds will go away and its not even the right action like how am I supposed to know what to do when this shit is completely insane

somehow I can say that they're pretty charming for how out there they are like some weird shit is gonna happen to aiba and youre gonna laugh but since its actually a dream its all good then you can steal the informations from the bad guys and alls well that ends well

so I guess that's the main gameplay loop it's not entirely my thing but I can live with that I definitely preferred the investigative bits because I'm more of a visual novel guy I like to sit back and see the story rolling instead im just not that much of a puzzle lover so the somnium stuff was kinda interesting but not entirely my thing and I actually struggle to call it puzzle because of the fact that its more trial and error-y than I'd like it to be honestly

while the investigative stuff is defo the highlight the characters actually tend to take the spotlight in this one since youre gonna have a lot of deep dive into the characterisation and psyche of these pixels and they all casually move around date I wonder what that means and mind you my favorite pals are iris being my sweet little ray of sunshine and mizuki being my sweet little sumo wrestler and aiba being my sweet little artificial intelligence I love the gals in this one I cannot lie and boss is also a good dominatrix to boot

story wise this can get a bit convoluted and stupid but DAMN is it not gripping and entertaining from beginning to end this one of those multiple endings type of narrative games but the catch is that it's more linear than I thought it'd be if you get in a route where you're not supposed to know some stuff the game is gonna gatekeep you from moving forward and you're gonna have to try and find the right route to unlock that one and then unlock another one and so on pretty good actually and you also get a flowchart I love flowcharts

so one second SPOILER TERRITORY I want to fuck falco also since this is the nick I use all the time it was pretty weird seeing the characters talk about this guy since I thought they were talking about me but at one point I was like wait I didnt have to put no name in the beginning and then the realisation that the guy is falco so as I was saying yeah I want to fuck him so hard but i mean he's also date but date is not date because he's the son of the congressman and date is not falco anymore because it's his deadname now LISTEN this game gets fucking convoluted I enjoyed a lot the little progression and the series of murders and shit here and there but the final revelation of the body swapping gets real confusing real fast sure it's pretty charming and fucked up and needs you to do a lot of suspension of disbelief to actually get ingrained into the whole affair but it pays off uchikoshi wrote a real treat of a sci-fi flavored crime mystery and I cannot really say any bad words about it

some routes hit more than the others or have more meat in terms of story than the rest but when you put them all together you can understand why this game was such a hit honestly and to zero escape fans returning this is gonna be up they're alley

while the body swapping thing gets real crazy I actually digged the whole falco backstory with iris and hitomi that shit was fire and made me lose all the hair on my head im not gonna fuck with you here those were some real good story beats

this is such a fucking ride from beginning to end its so serious at times and so incredibly silly at others but that's the charm of it all youre gonna get somebody talking about terminal illnesses and date will say oh my god boobs also what's up with date being a sex freak while I'm literally here waiting for him to ride me I don't get it

that being said the highs are high and this game makes you care for its characters too damn much you could find me crying for half of the endings in the games because theres nothing that hurts me more than making me emotionally attached to a character and then seeing them suffer through every evil in the world why would you make me so sad and thats without putting into the equation all the falco x hitomi x iris scenes with all the backstories and shit likeeee it's so fucking sad don't talk to me

final consideration the music is bomb

side note I find it very funny that mizuki has the orichalcum trident in the mermaid cafe and then I realised that's because she's been neglected by her family and she just kept going there not to be alone and then it wasn't funny anymore

and ota route HIT

I read about someone bashing sex humor don't you ever say that to me ever again sex humor is the funniest shit ever don't @ me

"i had a beautiful dream" iris i just wanted you to be happy

"fuck it, finally a fantasy"
~fred durst (2021)

consistently fun but bogged down by way-too-frequent mmo-esque fetch quests, a dogshit main antagonist and jill's comical lack of characterization

when it hits though, it really fucking hits. clive is a terrific lead, (kupka is also a fantastic rival) every major set piece manages to one up the last and the combat, while a bit easy for an action game absolutely braindead, is really fucking fun

only ps4/5 game thus far to feel like a truly "next gen" experience and a crystal clear reminder of the heights this series can reach when it's not rife with developmental problems

edit: that last line is still mostly correct but not in the way i'd like. it's certainly next-gen in terms of scope and scale with regards to spectacle, but the actual writing is piss poor. this was very much a honeymoon game and ng+ made it clear. xvi feels like a first draft