Here is a list of every single joke review I considered making:
Shellden Ring
Floodborne
Dark Shoals
Lies of Sea
Black Myth Dugong
Shellkiro: Shallows Rise Twice
Coral Shell

I couldn't pick one.

Anyway, weird how the funny-ass crab game is the best soulslike ever made that wasn't made by fromsoft. A fun art direction, a surprisingly good story, a really cool shell mechanic, and some very strong boss encounters. It's certainly lacking polish in a few areas and the music is occasionally quite bad, but I had a really REALLY good time with this game!

Oh my god this is one of the most dreadful experiences I've had in a while.

Callisto Protocol is practically 1/4th of a game. The visuals and music are stunning but it's hard to appreciate the few sequences that this game does well when it's in a technical state that makes Pokemon Scarlet and Violet piss itself.

But at least those games are genuinely good underneath. There is just absolutely nothing here.

The story leaves practically no impact as the characters do not have any sort of personality or stage presence that makes it work. The game also lacks any sort of themes to make its horror setting interesting, so it begs to ask what the point of exploring is.

Sorry, did I say explore? Oh yeah. You can't do that. The game is ultra linear, like, even by linear game standards. There are also no puzzles and VERY FEW bosses in the game.

Even more terminally is the fact that the combat in this game does not function like it should. Every fight is a borderline turn-based qte where you have to dodge all of the opponents attacks before hitting on your own. This results in the final boss and predicating mini bosses to be some of the most frustrating bosses I've played in a while. It's so fucking bad.

Between the shoddy performance, on-rails level design, disfunctional combat, and practically nonexistant story, this game somehow manages to both make me feel nothing and intense frustration and disappointment at the same time. I have no clue how you managed to do that, but here you are Callisto.

I apologize to Balan Wonderworld.

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE.

This bargain bin Gilson B Pontes ass multiplayer game is a visual and technical mess, has super boring and repetitive gameplay, it feels incredibly painful and grindy, and is monetized to a downright evil degree.

Babylon's Fall is symbolic of everything wrong with modern-day video games and I am incredibly disappointed that a developer as talented as platinum games could ship such a genuinely worthless and irredeemable product like this one.

Alright, strap in. I have a lot to say.

Let's get the elephant out of the room before I actually talk about this game. I am going to bring up issues I have with the game's art direction later on but none of that has to do with how sexualized the character designs are. I am fine with all of those other characters you want to use as a counterargument. That is not the core of my issue with this game, but before I get into that, I'll talk about what I DO like because I do still like this game.

I think on a graphical level, the game looks amazing. It runs consistently well and has been thoroughly play-tested which I shouldn't have to appreciate, but most great games usually have at least some small level of bugginess that this game does not have. Additionally, on this aesthetic front, I love the game's soundtrack, probably one of the year's standouts alongside Rebirth and Prince of Persia. I also think the linear and open-world missions in the game are, for the most part, quite fun! There are some survival horror-type missions that I found particularly memorable, even if they clash really hard with the rest of the game, but we're not there yet!

But the place where I have the hugest amount of praise for this game is its combat and enemy encounters. I'm gonna talk more about the game's "identity" later but this is where Stellar Blade's identity is strongest as it can't really be put in any camp for these 3D hack-and-slash games. It's not slow-paced and deliberate like a souls-like, but it's not super quick and combo-heavy like a DMC or a Bayonetta. The combat feels like a good mix of light comboing, really nice feeling parries, strong finishers, and a good amount of diversity in the way that you can approach combat. The enemies and bosses are also very well-designed and super difficult. The game shines brightest when focused on its great combat and there is a sequence near the end that works well for this game. It's great!

The game for the most part is really fun, super polished, and not particularly painful to go through. If someone might not have some of the same issues I do later on in this review, then I can see someone loving this game to pieces. But.. I have some SERIOUS issues with this game.

Starting off is the one that everyone, even the people who like the game is bringing up. On a narrative front, Stellar Blade is an absolute mess. The game's script is written so awkwardly, almost like it was machine-translated rather than actually localized. The dialogue is super awkwardly written and some moments in the side missions just feel kind of... embarrassing? The story setup is mildly interesting (until you notice something I'll bring up later), but the story's themes are barely explored apart from naming conventions and a couple of moments at the beginning and end.

The narrative didn't even need to be particularly deep or anything. Bayonetta and DMC games don't have deep stories, but A, they're not really trying to, and B, they do have a memorable cast with personalities at least. When I heard from reviews that Stellar Blade's cast isn't the strongest out there, what I DIDN'T expect to find was the most emotionless and barebones main character this side of The Callisto Protocol.

Eve is such a remarkably bland character, lacking a single actual personality trait. They try to develop Eve in a couple of ways regarding her ambiguous relationship with Tachy, who is also boring and has no character and then dies. They do a scene with this relationship in particular near the end of the game and it just felt so stilted and not super earned. But surely the other characters are better, right? I mean... I guess so? Lily at least has.. a personality and Adam, as boring as he is, at least has some interesting things happen with them later on, but the character writing is so incredibly weak in this game and the voice acting, both in Korean and English only makes it worse.

Okay, so that's the narrative stuff out of the way, what's that other major problem I have with the game that I've been edging you out of? This game does not have a fucking identity. I've been trying my best to hold back on comparing this game to NieR Automata up to this point, because I wanted to judge this game on its own, but it's so blatantly apparent just HOW MUCH of this game was derived from it. You play as a sexy android lady from a space base and are sent down to get rid of all of the bad guys that took over the Earth. You run around a semi-open world with a little drone that follows you around everywhere and talks to you. The game goes into detail on who the guys you are fighting and who you're working for REALLY ARE and there are themes of Identity and Religion and Life. The main character is very stoic and emotionless, but unlike 2B, here it's because they aren't written to have one. Hell, there are characters named Adam and Eve IN NIER AUTOMATA.

I know this all seems super surface level, but these comparisons wouldn't be such a huge problem if they had a super strong identity on their own and it really REALLY doesn't. The most distinctive thing about this game is that you're fighting Semi-religious gross penis monsters called Naytiba instead of robots. But that feels more like it clashes with the game's sci-fi aesthetic more than anything. Speaking of clashing, the character designs don't even really feel like they belong in the same game, most notably when you compare Eve, Lily, and Adam's designs. And they are the main 3 characters of the whole game. And most of the side characters don't even have faces, which is super weird? Why does the hairdresser have no hair? What are we doing here?

This also extends to the locations, Xion just feels like a pretty generic post-apocalyptic world. Half the time, in these linear missions, you fight in ruined cities and sewers and the two semi-open world areas you get are both bare empty deserts. I know asking for visual variety in a post-apocalyptic game is asking the wrong questions, but maybe have at least one of the open-world areas not be a desert??

All of these things combined, the art style clash between the different characters, friend, and foe, in this game, the super generic areas, the basic and derivative story, the lack of any characters with more than one personality trait, and the themes it doesn't touch on very much at all, leads to a game that doesn't really have an identity of its own. Hell, even though I love the music, it sounds very much like NieR music. The game's identity shines brightest in its combat, in its missions, in its boss encounters, and in one section near the end of the game that I thought was actually excellent.

This is clearly a talented team and the fact they were able to make a big console game this good on their first try is astounding. I can only hope their next game has more of a unique identity.

TLDR; The game is well-polished, has some great music, some decently fun linear and open world missions, and some exceptional combat and boss fights, but the character designs clash super hard with each other, the environments don't feel distinct, the story and character writing are incredibly bad, and the game just doesn't have a strong identity outside of copying NieR Automata's homework.

"I'm making mac and cheese and NOBODY CAN STOP ME!"

It feels so rare to find a game with quite literally nothing to offer. It is a Narrative Puzzle Video Game with a Bad Narrative, Bad Puzzles, Bad Video, and Bad Game. Let's break down these one by one.

The story in this game is QUITE BAD. Not only are almost none of the jokes and comedic antics found throughout this game all that funny, but the pacing of the story is so awful that it makes you get whiplash at multiple moments. One positive I'll give this is that this whiplash pacing can lead to scenes that are unintentionally hilarious (like the aforementioned Mac and Cheese scene) but it just reeks of laziness, not helped by the fact that the characters love to blatantly shout all of the metaphors and comparisons in the story out of fear for people not getting it. At least the Voice Acting is okay..?

This game was very clearly designed as a baby's first detective game so I was not expecting puzzles on the level of Ace Attorney, Return of the Obra Dinn, LA Noire, or even Danganronpa, but what I was expecting was.. any actual gameplay. The puzzles in this game are so brain-dead easy that you might not even RECOGNIZE THEM as puzzles until they're over. Again, this game was very clearly made for very young kids, so I'm not expecting too difficult puzzles, but the E-rated Pikmin 4, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Origami King are all on this console as well, so considering this is a $50 GAME you could definitely do a little more than this.

All of this would already put this game pretty low for me, like a 5 or something, but the real Achilles heel of this game is the fact that despite the sheer lack of gameplay or narrative substance, this game looks DIABOLICALLY BAD. These are the guys who made the Pokepark games on Wii AND the first Detective Pikachu on 3DS and, for those system's graphical capabilities, they didn't look bad. But this game looks absolutely HORRID. Not just in comparison to other switch games, but even compared to almost ALL of the other pokemon games on THIS SAME SYSTEM. The Lighting in this game is just straight-up nonexistent, the character models feel like they're plucked straight off the 3DS with very minimal upscaling, and the colors look incredibly washed out and drab. There are mobile games that look better than this. This might actually be the second-ugliest game I played this year behind Gollum because AT LEAST GARTEN OF BANBAN HAS LIGHTING. A lot of reviews that are a little softer on the game, criticize this game's graphics but praise its overall art direction with pokemon being seen as more alive than just animals. And to that, I say, go play Pokepark 2 on the wii.

Now, if this game was just a $20-$40 e-shop title that was thrown on switch after a tumultuous development period, then this review wouldn't be as long. I wouldn't even really care that much. But, and I must reiterate, this game is $50. And for $50, you get an incredibly short game with basically no gameplay, a poorly paced and unengaging story, puzzles so easy that even a baby could solve them, and, quite possibly, the worst visuals from any Nintendo Published game.... ever? (at least by the standards of when they were released) This game signals to me as direct proof, that the poor technical states of the Pokemon series have NOTHING to do with the individual developers of these games but with how Nintendo and The Pokemon Company keep imposing incredibly strict deadlines on these devs to keep pumping out games all the time, which is something Game Freak itself has acknowledged and is saying they're trying to move away from.

So I really hope that this game ages a lot worse in the future.

This game is Quadruple Ass.

I am so glad I don't have to play this at launch. I played the open beta and an even earlier version about 6 months ago. The two versions were identical, and all accounts are saying that nothing has changed from the beta and the final game meaning I can talk about what I played.

That is, to say, a baffling regression from the 11-year-old AC: Black Flag. A game where 95% of all actions are done in your ship, only stepping out at specific ports to buy items and accept menial side quests. A game where you do all of the combat, exploration, and SURVIVAL MECHANICS in your ship. A truly baffling game that is so clearly limping out of development hell, and you can see it in every aspect of the game.

You can tell this game was going to have some sort of story at some point, but it just.. doesn't. I sometimes complain about RPGs that have a main quest that feels like a bunch of side quests duct-taped together but that's LITERALLY what this is. There is no overarching storyline, no interesting characters, NOTHING. Just awkwardly presented window dressing for you to do boring open-world quests that either ask you to find some materials kill a couple of ships or some flavor of those two.

It doesn't help that the game doesn't look that great either. There are moments where the visuals look pleasing like during a sunset, but the closer you are to the visuals the crustier and less defined they look, made all the worse when you see just how BUGGY this game is. There were so many opportunities to fix the bugs from the previous times I've played this game and we got NOTHING. Audio bugs, visual bugs, frame drops, server crashes, game crashes, the whole shebang. I have reported at least 8 of the bugs that still show up in the final product of this $70 Quadruple-A game.

The open-world and survival bullshit is not frustrating, but it is incredibly monotonous. Ship controls are generally janky and the process of mining for loot, using it to upgrade your ship, and increasing your infamy level CAN be super rewarding if it weren't for several baffling design decisions like the fact that you have to do ALL of that in your ship. But the other big one is that.. that's the extent of the game.

It's not deep enough to invest all your time into, but it takes the place of an interesting story, actual quests that mean anything, out-of-ship exploration, all of it. While it may have some nice music and there are brief moments where the stars align and the gameplay loop is decently engaging and interesting, it just doesn't make up for everything that was lost. It's just an objectively lesser version of a PART of Black Flag, stuffed with microtransactions and shoved onto stores for $70. What an embarrassing turnout from Ubisoft.

I can't think of the last time I played a game where I mulled over its themes like this one. I do this all the time for great movies (I did this for The Zone of Interest a couple of months ago), but I don't think I've seen a story come out of a game that fully utilized its medium and was so artistically unique, quite like this one. It throws a LOT at the wall, and while not all of it sticks gameplay-wise, I still recommend people try this out. It's short (almost too short), cheap, and it'll gnaw at your brain hours after beating it.

Don't mistake me. This is a HIGH 7, and don't be surprised if it's bumped up by the end of the year, as I can only see myself appreciating this game more from here.

On paper, Pokemon Violet is one of the best pokemon games. The open world gameplay is incredibly fun, the music is great, the story is actually really interesting, the new pokemon roster is fun, and it has without the best climax out of any pokemon game.

It's absolutely incredible.

But this game just is not fucking done. I personally did not deal with many bugs, but the frame rate is absolutely abhorrent.

For now, it is a 9/10 game that is being rated a lot lower because it is simply not done. I am so sad, but I can not recommend this to anyone yet.

Just know that if it does get patched, you will very much enjoy it.

IF YOU'RE NOT A FAN OF THE WORDS:
PEAK FICTION
GOAT
RAW
FIRE

Click off the Review.

So, Hi-Fi Rush came out of fucking nowhere and kinda took over my life for the past few days. I love rhythm games and Character Action games, so having something like this which has this and a ton of personality to boot might actually be one of the best surprise drops in gaming history.

The story doesn't start out mind-blowing and Chai could be a bit much at times, but both him and the story get much better as the game goes along and ends in a pretty sweet place. I love ALL of the other characters, except maybe the villain. Sonic doesn't really have much of a presence throughout the game and isn't all too threatening, but he's still fun for what the game is. But the others? Awesome. I love Chai, Peppermint, Korsica, Macaron, the other bosses, this game is so fucking clever with its dialogue and so endearing in its tone that I grew attached to this little band of misfits quick.

And that's before even mentioning this game's incredible presentation. The comic book inspired art direction fits really well and at times gives me JSR flashbacks. The animations are crisp both 2D and In Engine, the soundtrack is an absolute fucking BOP from beginning to end, and the game looks and runs really good technically as well.

As a beatemup character action game based around rhythm, it definitely took me a bit to get used to, but once it got going I was having a BLAST. Timing all of the hits, jumps, and dodges to the beat was super fun and optimizing my runs with special moves, ally attacks, and passive abilities was incredibly fun. There is SO MUCH CUSTOMIZATION HERE.

And the bosses are all amazing and the movement is mostly fluid and the voice acting throughout the game was cheesy and fun without sounding grating like another video game that released this week! This game just should not be REAL. I almost feel like I'm playing an early 2000s Cartoon Network show with incredible rhythm based combat.

I love this game so much, and even if it isn't perfect and the character and controls troubles does keep it from the 5/5 it probably deserves, I am just so SO happy that this game exists.

Also Peppermint is a bi icon, sorry ya had to hear it from me!