tragic events in history: sonic's death. while boarding a train he got shot in the ass and F*CKING DI-

this one almost fulfills my dream of a sonic game where the characters are written a la jehtt or snapcube videos. tmosth (wow, that's an ugly acronym) has certified fanfiction vibes. it goes places. it appreciates that every sonic character has depth, and it made me squeal like a little girl nearly the entire time i played it.

first impressions- the character costumes are SOOOOOOOOOO cute. knuckles, my favorite sonic character (i was holding my knuckles plush through the whole playthrough), doesn't get much screentime but he's got this silly cowboy getup that make me giggle. amy has this super pretty frilly dress that pops way more than her typical fit; i'd think it apt for how confident and pinkie-pie-esque she is here. none of that lovey-dovey sonic-obsessed BS! i love it. the rouge costume & characterization are also fan-freaking-tastic. deadass one of my FAVORITE CHARACTERS EVER. an absolute queenie. pretty as heckin heck (i might have a giant crush). stylin' on everyone in her mondo cool jacket 'n jeans combo. i'm not entirely convinced she didn't sneak a gun onto the train. however, though she might be my favorite character, my favorite costume is tails'. it's so simple but he's just so gosh darn adorable. the little detective smans gets a big spotlight in this here murder mystery and i think he deserved it bigtime. he's degraded to a nonautonomous sidekick too often in the main games, so seeing his linux user ass investigate around and nerd out about books made my heart uber happy. every time his puppydog eyes sprite came on scream i SCREAMED. my only initial complains are the lack of silver (and 06 callbacks in general) and the sonic-forces-fursona-ass-inself-insert-oc main character, but @Cjer named him Mike Schmidt which made up for his exceptionally lame personality.

alright, y'all know my ass puts a bigger emphasis than most on sound design and music. so how does the shiny 5-star fare in that department?
...pretty poorly! it sits in a sweet spot between typical and grating. if i had to pick a favorite ost, i would pick the jazzy lounge car theme (though that's the midi-jazz addicted section of my brain talking). oh, on the note of the traincars- i haven't even introduced the main concept of the game yet. it's a murder mystery on a train. musically underwhelming though it may be, the devs did make up for that aesthetic weakness with the visual design of the traincars. each one makes up the equivalent of a telltale episode. every character (or duo of characters) gets their own traincar; this way, everyone gets their own tailored little environment and slot of screentime. very swag B). shadow's car/the lounge car is my favorite, with its little chao band (called the Big Chao Band). the Big Chao Band had two drummers and two bassists and two pianists because the assets kept glitching and duplicating on cj's screen. tbh shadow's car should have had emo music. he's a certified guyliner user. he's also a certified "kid who cried to linkin park in their room because they were gay and in the closet", though i'm too much of an amy x shadow person to 100% call him gay. their dynamic is perfect here. i appreciate the writers showing his soft side considering sega's trying to turn him into this 1 dimensional cool guy as of recent.

what were we talking about?

any good sonic game has one confounding game design choice that sours the experience for normies. surprisingly, this visual novel has a huge one in the form of mandatory gba-ass isometric platforming sections. i feel bad for whatever 7 year old didn't get to see the ending after getting filtered by the final section's projectile gauntlet. luckily, i watched cj play the game over call, so i get to ignore all that and proclaim that this is a perfect game. like any other kamige, the message is obviously to live happily. i'll say i certainly came out of the murder of sonic the hedgehog happier than i did subahibi! i know this is an april fools game, but sega: i would kill for a sequel. my face hurts from how much i've been smiling.

"to the confident, unshakable, and radiant amy rose!"

Retro Yearly List #15 [1989: Tetris]

Tetris may be a difficult game to rate, I mean, it's kind of a genre itself, and there are not many comparisons to make here, so thinking from the perspective of what a game has to be, this one delivers everything needed.
It was innovative like no other, with a gaming style that is addictive even those days, to the point to having it turned into a culture inside and outside the gaming niche, everybody knows Tetris nowadays (at least if you were not born last month).
The music, you probably already know the main one, the classical "Korobeiniki", based on a Russian tone, is simply a timeless and beautiful melody, I did not bother to have it on loop while trying to beat my own high scores. The second song also caught my attention, so was a nice surprise.
This version also has some diverse challenges other than the infinite high-score-based one, allowing you to play the Type-B games which are different levels with finite goals, you can also add to the difficulty selecting a level of "high" which will start your game with a pile of random trash that you need to overcome.
The game has some sky-rocket cutscenes that will appear depending on your score, which is a nice touch, I was not able to get them tho, since my maximum score was 37.000 only.
Tetris has everything you need to have FUN, and that's something that nobody can deny.

As someone who played the original Mario RPG for the first time as an adult only recently, the Mario RPG Remake blew even me away with feelings of nostalgia. It is such a faithful reimagining of a game that means so much to so many people. The visuals of the game felt so true to the original and it added such a spark of magic to see all the beloved characters from 1996 come to life in the HD cutscenes. The remade soundtrack had such care and thought put into it as well. Veterans of the series may be left with a want for a hard-mode option though, as the game still hedges on the easy side. Overall this game was a delight to play from beginning to end, and I look forward to checking out some of the post-game content.

Me Caveman.

I will Unga and if Sun God willing, maybe some Bunga too. It don’t take much for caveman to have oog oog time, maybe throw rock, hang dong. No brain required. Game give big field for caveman to swing stick but after seeing two or three moons and bludgeon creatures, caveman ended up honk-shoo honk-shoo on hard rock bed.

Game give too many menus about tree with skill and item craft with backpack limit. Too restrictive for caveman. Let caveman have unlimited inventory so caveman don’t lose eyes to the sacred roll when woman caveman ask for new hut. Now caveman has to walk to cold cave and dodge 74th jaguar kitty to pick “rare” weed and skin “rare” wolf with the same brain melt music playing in caveman cranium. Tree with skill only offer caveman simple bonus resource and no damage ups. Make hard for caveman to grubbagrong the other cavemen who come in drove with massive damage stick. Somehow bad caveman see me caveman from too far away and now the country of bad caveman on me caveman ass. Only funny when random mammoth spawn nearby and mammoth kill most of other tribe unprompted. Caveman find tribe infiltration boring, but game kept making caveman do tribe infiltration.

Me caveman found badger, named him Ciabatta. Ciabatta good badger who kill most other cavemen, only cool thing that make caveman unhinge mouth and point at during game. Ciabatta not fair well with bad bosses though, bosses and mini-bosses crush Ciabatta in one swing. Then caveman die. Caveman no like when perish because game say checkpoint, but not load checkpoint upon rainbow bridge traversal. Ciabatta and all other caveman friends stay dead but bad cavemen already killed get revived by Moon Goddess. It feel like Yak ass when happen. Two big bosses in game unimpress caveman. Would rather take nap in Sun than play cat and mouse pot shot with ice man and arrow lady and their mitosis spawning cavemen family. Final fight is butt cheese from oldest mammoth, only amount to playing peek-a-boo with baby while she hide behind door caveman not allowed to smash down for some reason.

Caveman also have to mention that universe would randomly stop moving around him, bringing him back to something called PS5 screen. PS5 screen appear whenever cutscene happen or caveman fast travel, making caveman have to redo thing again. PS5 screen appear many times, now worship him every Sunday sun rise. Cavemen and animals sometimes stuck in crevice then learn to fly due to Physics God drinking too much fermented stew. Caveman know that when boss at 0 HP then boss should be taken away by One Who Kills, yet some bosses still live with empty health bar and take 30 more rock to face before succumbing to weak knees. Caveman clenched butthole too hard wondering if game broken while trying to survive and not redo 30 minute fight with gabagoog.

Caveman think made mistake buying funny caveman game and expecting caveman time. Game not work well and make caveman fun time too much of chore like wife ask. If other Far Cry games like this, caveman would rather have brain matter splattered on rock instead.

I have grown more attached to Shadowheart than I have to most people in my actual life and the fact that she's not real depresses me immensely.

Oh, the game? It's great!

The amount of ambition on display from Larian Studios here is absolutely staggering, to the point that it's actually surprising just how much of it pays off. The characters are all incredibly interesting, well-rounded and fantastically written and voice-acted. The gameplay kept me engaged for the most part, and despite my general dislike of turn-based action it was pretty easy for me to get to grips with it.

The story is great and there's enough side-quests off the beaten path that I feel like BG3 is well worth paying full price for. I went through the game at a fairly brisk pace and clocked up 85 hours in the end. If you were willing to explore different ways of playing the game (including the unique Dark Urge path) then you could easily lose hundreds of hours to it.

Sadly a few issues prevented me from giving BG3 full marks. The game's third act can be very overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to know what to do and where to go without losing certain content. Some side quests feel unfinished, like Larian ran out of time before they could flesh them out properly. That's not to mention that a lot of the stories of your fellow companions, so beautifully developed in the first two acts, tend to fizzle out. Once you complete their personal quests they stop being the fully fleshed out characters they were and end up just being sorta... there.

There were also a few annoying bugs riddled throughout; characters sometimes being unable to jump, textures not loading properly or being stretchy, enemies taking almost a full minute to decide what they wanted to do in a turn. Nothing game-breaking but they added up.

I don't regret any of the time I spent playing this - in fact, as someone with absolutely no prior experience with anything D&D-related this has actually made me want to get into it more, whether that's through other video games or actually playing it with other people. Of course, for that I actually need to find some friends first...

P.S. I don’t care if the ‘Party Limit Begone’ mod is ‘cheating’, nothing feels better than running around the city with my merry band of ten adventurers. The easier combat is secondary to not having to miss out on any companion-specific dialogue with NPCs.

After about 100-ish accumulated hours, I think I've had my fill on Baldur's Gate 3. Some of that is just how much I'm able to tolerate the sort of loosely content-driven nature of the western-developed open world RPG -- which BG3 isn't necessarily open world, I actually really love how tightly designed its overworld maps are, but unfortunately it does happen to share many of the same pitfalls that tend to wear me down in those games like endless vendor trash and dogshit inventory management. But I also feel like there's something missing from the game itself that would elevate the experience to something truly incredible, and I can't quite put my finger on what that could be.

Maybe it's that the game's narrative feels somewhat devoid of meaning or message; it feels like a means to an end for the developers and writers to get to the important combat set pieces. But even then I can respect how difficult that can be to implement in a game that's largely about fulfilling personal fantasies through diverse and emergent gameplay. On the other hand, Larian has kinda compromised true freedom for a facade of sorts, dialogue trees are bland and the dialogue pacing itself can feel jerky and awkward -- and I say this having not played the game as the Dark Urge, so maybe that could potentially alleviate this little peeve of mine -- but it doesn't feel like there's enough functional variance to make that feel more understandable.

I love the party members, but it's disappointing how rarely they ever play off each other. I get that there's so many variables at play that they can't reasonably have a conversation ready for every set of characters in every situation, but even just having banter at the campsite would've gone a long way. The vast majority of the game's dialogue is the game talking at you, but even then it rarely even feels like a conversation. The whole romance aspect is probably the most revelatory of all though: I'm just really, really not a fan of how western RPGs (and a few non-western RPGs like modern Fire Emblem and Persona) implement romance as this utilitarian content thing. I think the only time I've walked away from a modern game with player character romance options somewhat fulfilled was Judy's romance in Cyberpunk 2077 (and even that had its issues, like the "sex" scene that felt like they just stole animations from a Second Life NSFW server). Anyways, my point is kinda just, in the pursuit of making a world where they want you to go about things in your own way, they've created an entire framework that exists purely for the player at all times -- even within the facets of the game that should feel more human.

And before I let this whole thing run away as purely negative, which has not been my intention at all, because ultimately I think very highly of the game and there is A LOT that I do love about Baldur's Gate 3: the main party has cool and distinctive designs, the music (while a bit safe) is always pleasant and appropriately utilized, like I said earlier the scope of the world and the design of its maps are how I wish more modern devs would handle the scale of their games instead of just big open maps, I really enjoy the combat even if the 5e power scaling kinda hurts the pacing more than it helps it, the game is gorgeous on the whole, and I think the voice acting is pretty fuckin' great! The entire package of Baldur's Gate 3 is undeniably incredible; it's a landmark title and it honestly deserved getting so many GOTY awards (though personally I just found 2023 to be lacking in amazing experiences, mostly being a deluge of decent to good titles, and Baldur's Gate 3 was the real standout for me).

But, I think it also has illuminated a lot of Larian's weaknesses if their other games hadn't done so already, and Larian being able to address those or not in future titles is gonna be the deciding factor on if they become the next BioWare/Bethesda (in a bad way). Like, they seem to have solid writers, but the structure of the game just does none of that narrative justice. Dialogue is exhausting and annoying for the most part, more CRPG devs need to do the Disco Elysium thing of putting it in an easily readable sidebar. If what I've heard about Dark Urge origin is to be trusted, it makes me want to see them do something more focused on a specific character framework instead of spreading themselves thin with seven origin characters and a blank slate -- say what you will about the Mass Effect trilogy, particularly its politics lol, but having a singular character anchored into the world was clearly economically effective (in terms of development resources and probably money) for the scale of each project, and effective at allowing the player to roleplay meaningfully at the cost of freedom. Or just lean harder into that freedom aspect, make the dialogue a more meaningful part of the experience, and not just feeling like the part of the game where you have to eat your vegetables before getting back to the good stuff (i.e. murdering all the bad guys on the map).

Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm at least speaking for what I am personally craving from one of these RPGs. It was a bit frustrating how close BG3 came to satiating this feeling I've been left with post-Mass Effect 3 disappointment, but ultimately BG3 didn't really stick the landing for me and that has kinda sucked, especially when I think it's otherwise a pretty fun experience. Also like, at least allow me to have Karlach, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel be in a relationship if you want the game to be hinged on this design theme of indulgent, hedonistic freedom. Not sure if that's a real complaint or if I'm just trying to find an excuse to bring up gay things in my reviews like usual, I just want to see them all hold hands or something, all these party members very clearly want to kiss each other and Larian won't let them... I don't even really want a romance when I'm playing as Tav (cuz like I said the romance feels so empty when it's just a game talking at nothing lol) I want to see the actual characters be happy with each other!! Idk let Astarion make out with Gale or something, if these people really are so horny, they should canonically be fucking each other too or something, man.

Kinda lost the thread here, but uh, what's something inflammatory I can end this on. Oh, how about: Baldur's Gate 3 is the first game I've ever played that makes content-driven media seem good actually. Hm, too back-handed and maybe not even true. Baldur's Gate 3 is the Chrono Trigger of CRPGS? Not sure what that means tbh. Let's just take a little of both: Baldur's Gate 3 is simultaneously the best Dragon Age game and the best Elder Scrolls game released in the past 15 years. It's also somehow less racist than Mass Effect? Idk man, maybe I should've played Planescape: Torment instead.