Got to HR7, made my endgame armor set, beat the final-not-final boss and done all the available apex rampages, which I guess is as far as you can take the game at the moment.

The “it’s Monster Hunter for people who don’t like Monster Hunter!” comments are fair, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It’s clear this is an accessible take on Monhun for one of the most accessible games consoles of all time. If you wanna wander around the frozen wastes with a hot drink for ten minutes to land a paintball on a Tigrex before it carts you in two swipes of its claw because your finger slipped on the PSP thumbnipple, the old games are still there to punish you. Rise has a firm focus on fun first, and I think that’s just fine. Brilliant, even.

Driving a 200mph dog into a Zinogre’s face in order to start a Devil May Cry Smokin’ Sick Style!!! combo feels antithetical to the methodical precision of Old Monster Hunter, but it also feels fucking phenomenal, so who cares? In every single quest I turn my charge blade into a roaring chainsaw that chews through helpless idiot monster tails and then zipline my way up into the sky to unload an axe full of dynamite into their pathetic little skulls. Then I go to the blacksmith in the beautiful Japanese mountain village and he turns their bones into a pair of jeans for me. It’s pure violence porn on the Nintendo Switch.

The “it’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever!” comments are fair, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you aren’t stopping to catch your breath every time your wee man does more than a minute’s jogging. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because the game doesn’t make you carry a single stupid egg unless you really, really want to. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you can skip any cutscene you want. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because Capcom somehow turned the Switch into a Ferrari. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you have a dog that’s a motorbike and you can turn yourself into Spider-Man. Amazing.

I totally get the complaints about the weirdly stilted endings that both the single and multiplayer content have - I saw the credits on the first day this game came out, and was suitably bemused by the “uhh maybe play multiplayer?” advice from my hunting mentor in the final cutscene. It’s a bit of a raw deal - a situation I imagine may have came about as a result of Capcom having to shift their entire workforce to WFH over the last year - but I can forgive that. I don’t need Capcom to give me cutscenes or storylines or spoon content into my mouth. In Monster Hunter Rise, you make your own cool shit happen.

Made it to HR7 and absolutely clowned [REDACTED] so I'm calling that completed for now.

It might be the best MH so far. They streamlined a lot of stuff and made it so much more accessible, despite what certain outlets might claim. We got a newcomer pal into the series nae bother. So much multiplayer fun to be had wrangling monsters and bringing them into ongoing fights.

They even did us Insect Glaive Boys justice with the Switch Skills (the Diving Wyvern in particular) making up for otherwise quite bland silkbind moves. I'm excited for DLC so I can continue to fly through the air very big and smash giant creatures.

Everything limps...

Remember Space Invaders? Me neither. These days, it’s a game that mostly exists to pad out ‘Top 100 Video Games of All Time’ lists and sell novelty heat-change mugs. So when Space Invaders: Infinity Gene declares ”THE KING OF GAMES IS BACK!” in its opening moments, it kinda feels like that time your drunken dad shouted ”THE KING OF GAMES IS BACK!” while weaving towards the karaoke machine for a frenetic cover of a 60s hit you’ve never heard of. The game goes to great lengths to show you how much it’s evolved, but ultimately it’s an exercise in stripping away everything that uniquely identifies Space Invaders in favour of a standard shmup that seems hell-bent on inducing epilepsy in anyone who’s able to make it beyond the first world. Taito have swapped their king’s crown for a Yankee snapback and squeezed him into some skinny jeans - it would be impolite of us not to give him an encouraging smile and a respectful nod, but maybe keep your distance. The old man is dying.

I feel like I've had a real bad run of disappointments with Doom Eternal, R3MAKE, and now this.

The most accurate way I can describe how the game made me feel was that it's like playing with someone's hands on your shoulders, and they're near-constantly turning you here and there, telling you where to look, and how long for.

[Hold triangle to continue reading]

It's: "Go. Stop. Ok, go. Turn and look at this. Now go. Stop. Walk. Look over here. Stop. Go. Wait, look at this... Keep looking... Keep Looking... Now go".

Over and over and over. It's a real shame because there's some great stuff in there, old and new. But it's absolutely mired in egregious modern AAA structure. The amount of slow ducking under this, and carefully sidling through that is ridiculous. Forced walks and having the camera wrenched from you time and time again because they don't trust you to look and find things yourself. I cannae even be bothered going into the bloat and busywork, but the game is a good 15 hours too long, and I forced myself through it like I haven't had to do with anything in some time.

Barret's great, and I wish Marlene was my pal.

racing games' The Bouncer, and i mean that as the highest praise possible. cannot really bring anything more to the table that the excellent reviews by squigglydot, kingbancho, and letshugbro have not already discussed but god damn i completely adored this game. aesthetics, vibes...all of it is off the god damn charts and hits my aesthetic sensibilities dead-on.

this simple but deceptively taxing game of knowing when to push your machine and when to let go to handle unforgiving corners on your way to the front of the pack has a mood and vibe that leaves modern multi-million dollar productions hopelessly in the dust. y2k optimism in it's purest form, trusting the machine to take you where you need to go but never letting it control you.

few games have better endings than this. on a track where the assumptions you have built up will fail you time and time again, in the closing minutes of the 20th century, how do you survive? by slamming your foot down on the accelerator and never letting go, never looking back, until the years become blurred around you, until 1999 is nothing but a distant speck in the rear view mirror, and you reach the future before it arrives.

a masterpiece.

The “Earthbound / Xenogears / Jet Set Radio / Donkey Kong Country fan excited to finally play the game” meme, but it’s me and Ridge Racer Type 4. As a big DnB fan, I’ve been moving in circles to this soundtrack for well over ten years, but for some reason never had the wherewithal to actually spend 5 minutes downloading the ISO and experiencing the free video game this classic album came with. Getting the disc was one thing - configuring DuckStation to a satisfactory specification was a whole other. I’m generally not too picky about how my games emulate, but something about Type 4 just demanded I tune my machine to neon-smooth sheen, and it paid off by miles - I got my shaders and filters and scaling playing just right for the pixels to bleed together and brake-light after-images to leave a lasting impression. Few games this short can stick around for so long - you can breeze through this in an afternoon, and will come back for more afternoons in the future. It’s the one for me!