feel like i got catfished. the gameplay loop here entirely kills this for me - i was under the impression Pacific Drive was gonna be a linear(ish) journey to the heart of the Stalker Zone but it ends up being an almost roguelike experience centred around going out on missions from your garage hubworld. it's more of a loot-centric game than a driving one, one way less lonely and more game-y than i hoped. i'm not into crafting survival games at all but the concept really intrigued me, just not enough to not groan at its opening garage tutorial segment or not feel like it was getting tedious after two missions. not bad, if you're into these sorts of games you'll defo find something valuable here, just really let me down personally.

i feel like my fellow gay bitches online are all lying to me on this one. big issue: i think its story kind of sucks. Signalis is more interested in cryptic lore dumps, ominous poetry, mysteriously censored documents, and spooooky german words than actually setting an atmosphere or crafting a world. the protagonists' romance is supposed to be the beating heart but it read as very bland and hollow, you never get to know much about them and (SPOILERS) they all used to read Word Up magazine anyways. i'm not interested in filling in its blanks because none of it made me feel emotions. this would be fine if it was better to play but Signalis is too easy - its toughest element is its limited inventory, combat is largely avoidable and not too challenging if engaged with. there's not enough friction here, your android girl is a great runner and a great shot. the art direction is very nice, the models and lighting look gorgeous, but there's not enough unique assets in the game. it felt like i was mostly in the same few places fighting the same few enemies the entire time. i do think it succeeds at having some pretty inventive puzzles and i do love the first-person segments, i wish there were more (non-narrarive) setpiece-oriented ones. Signalis had one last thing it could do to hook me, but it loses me here too - none of this game is fucked up! there's never any freaky shit going down, no psychosexual pervert nightmares or nasty stuff or even anything slightly disturbing. i like yuri, i crave that sicko shit!!! Signalis felt like a dystopian teen YA with a bit of sprinkle of Twilight Syndrome and sci-fi militarism, very tame for what was supposed to be a hellish pseudo-reality.

i only really watch youtube videos about video games. Bubsy 3D is a game i've been hearing about since i was eight, serving as the arch-enemy of many a white boy with a camera and a zelda t-shirt. Bubsy 3D has, more than any other game on earth, been forced onto gamers by their evil clones while they plead to play 'anything but THAT game!!!', a game routinely branded as "THE WORST GAME EVER?!?" - which it could never actually be because it makes me feel things.

i love Bubsy 3D's goofy soundtrack, its oddly evocative minimalist landscapes, and i kinda love Bubsy himself but i'd never pretend it's fun to play. it's fun to think about, to imagine how hard it must've been to develop. everyone brings up how shit it looks in comparison to Mario 64, but you gotta remember the only "3D platformers" before its development began were Bug! (not an actual 3D platformer) and Jumping Flash! - neither of which had third-person 3D platforming, both of which had really exciting exclamation points. i just don't think Bubsy 3D really deserves the scorn late-2000s internet gave it. maybe a marginally better reputation, not a good one.

i've never played another game published by Private Division - but my wife LOVED Kerbal Space Program, so i was a little afraid when i saw their name on this after KSP 2's botched early-access release. and i should have been! this game is really neat, but it just wasn't ready. going fast while platforming in Penny's Big Breakaway (atm) is to get stuck on a slope, or get stuck in a platform, or just completely overshoot it and fall into the abyss. it's frustrating!!!!!! even without its bugs, i think its control system will filter out a lot of players. it's not that immediately satisfying, it requires a certain level of understanding to be rewarding and i love games like that! i love when they make me learn things! i just don't always know if performing well in-game is even that rewarding. maybe i just have bad depth-perception? regardless, i hope Evening Star make more 3D platformers cuz this is a really cool one. insanely gorgeous to the eyes and ears, but not as fulfilling to my soul. fully willing to accept that as a skill-issue tho.

one of my favourite aspects of the N64/PS1 era was just how hangout-able so many of its platformers were. i just want to inhabit a world like Peach's castle, the hubs of Spyro 2, and most of Banjo-Kazooie. that shit all had such delicious atmosphere, music, neat lil secrets, and great movesets to explore with. Cavern of Dreams fully embodies all of those great elements of its forefathers but fully cranks up the mysterious, slightly-spooky feelings playing games could give off up late at night on a CRT.

Cavern of Dream's tone and visuals are simply too good, its colour palette makes me want to cry. it's pulling from lots of N64-era games (particularly Rare's) but its main inspiration seems to be "the astral observatory in Majora's Mask", which might just be the single most beautiful location ever put in any game so i heavily fuck with the dev's vision. nearly every new location made me go "woah!!! pretty!!!" out-loud and take a couple screenshots. that made me like the game by default, but i was overjoyed to find out just how smooth of an experience 100%'ing Cavern of Dreams was. its areas are really compact, full of sharply-designed puzzles and challenges that never go too far in frustrating the player or boring them.

Cavern of Dreams isn't very long, getting 100% took me around 6 hours and very little of that time was spent aimless or upset. aside from maybe two stand-out sections that annoyed me (the final boss, the whirlpools in an end section that send you back a minute of walking) and a few qualms with the player's movement (it's really easy to bounce off a wall when trying to ground-pound) this was an absolute joy. i want to put this game in my mouth.

Ichiban Kasuga is simply one of the best protagonists a video game has ever had, i love him so much. the previous game's narrative was one of my favourites in any game - so when it was revealed that Ichi would be sharing protagonist duty with Kiryu, i was upset. i know this is sacrilegious to Yakuza fans but there are like ten other games where you play as Kiryu and one of them released three (3!!!) months before this one! i've had enough of his ass and wanted more of Ichiban. unfortunately, my fears that the story would more-or-less throw Ichiban to the sidelines so that Kiryu can have one last ride (again(again)) were proven correct.

Kiryu's story is the beating heart of this game. he has a beautiful narrative about coming to terms with is own mortality, fragile after years being the underworld legend of coolguy action and masculinity (positive), learning to rely on others and forgive himself so that he can fight on. Infinite Wealth tells you loudly, just like with Ichiban's impassioned tear-jerking ending monologue in LaD, that you have to live. i haven't played the entire Yakuza series, but Kiryu's sections with Date were really strong. old, lonely men learning to finally reach out and find a reason to keep going. i can't imagine how rewarding his 'bucket list' stuff must be to longtime fans, it had me tearing up over the pocket fighter guy. its villains are pretty weak, but its side-characters and themes are spectacular.

Ichiban's story, sadly, just isn't as fleshed-out or strong as Kiryu's. which sucks! it starts off strong but loses its focus as it goes. the early shit with police brutality, Hawaii's colonial issues, and poverty really felt like it was going somewhere special. when the true villain is revealed, a religious cult lead by a creepy white dude with violent fanatics shipped into every upper echelon of society's hierarchy (notably including the police) it really seems like Infinite Wealth is about to say something. but once that villain is revealed, and after the Vtuber twist, it feels like its story runs out of ideas. especially considering how Kiryu's side has a villain with far more personal relevance to Kasuga (which barely even registers in the plot), it's odd how much this side flatlines. i love its main characters, Tomizawa and Yamai are great new additions, and i love the side-stories. i love hearing these characters just chill out, i love them!!! its setting is wonderful, even if Hawaii more-or-less feels like Japan 2. after a certain point though, it didn't feel like taking place in Hawaii really had much relevance at all.

there's gameplay with that story, too. they fixed every issue with 7's combat and made one of the most fun RPGs there is! i love how it plays, though i think some of its balancing is questionable. cash goes from something so hard to get it's brutal (in a great way) to comically overabundant past the midpoint of the game, especially post-Dondoko Island. i really enjoyed Dondoko Island though! genuinely more fun than New Horizons was. there's so much to do in this that it's almost nauseating at points. honestly, it might've made some complaints i have with the story's pacing exist in the first place - i spent five days just on Sujimon and Dondoko. i just love that these are big RPGs now though. there's so much goofy, creative shit it does.

the ending was extremely heartwarming, i'm very excited to play as Ichiban and never as Kiryu again. leave him alone!!!!!!! let me play go on more Kasugadventures please!!!!!!!!

peak '6-7 out of 10' type game. it's derivative and (unsurprisingly) doesn't come close to matching Paul Verhoeven's tone and wit but damn if that slop ain't satisfying. improves upon developer Teyon's previous Fallout-esque RPG FPS based on an 80s film franchise, largely due to how charismatic and cute Robocop himself is. is it weird to call him cute?? this game has maybe too many dialogue-heavy sequences and an unexciting plot but by virtue of its protagonist it never lost my interest entirely. its small cast of corny stock 80s side characters can be charming too, it surprised be how earnest and straight they played it. its sense of humour isn't always too sharp, but the sidequests often made me smile in a silly sorta way. stuff like helping a bum rent a movie, finding someone's cat, and waggling your finger at parking violations.

the game's gunplay feels pretty great, though the 'gun' in this case really is just a singular gun. you can pick weapons off of thrashed goons 'n bad dudes but your upgrade-able auto-9 pistol is more than enough. never stopped being satisfying, either. it just feels good to melt a guy's blood, throw them out of a window, throw FPS-level explosive barrels at them, or dash through their skeleton. you'll be doing a lot of that but you'll also be doing goofy police shit. investigations and lame 'go over there and talk to the guy' quests that all, inevitably, lead to a bunch of punks coming to give you trouble. the gameplay loop isn't fresh but the combat and character upgrades kept me till the end credits.

i'd highly recommend playing on hard mode. it's pretty easy even then but the walking-tank power fantasy necessitates that to an extent. i'm a woman with people who love her in her life, so i can accept that this is a fantasy world with good cops but i get that some people wouldn't be able to disengage so easily. their loss, this slop's fun. the game's satire is far more obvious than the film's but it's got its heart in the right place. helps that Robocop is one of the only 80s pop culture relics i have any warmth for, but this is a totally fine little AA FPS if you're in the mood for some mid (endearing).

not very compelling as a personality test or as a game but the concept is super charming. for a personality test, despite its short length, there's a shocking lack of situations that made me think about anything i was doing. part of that is sincerely cool - i think analyzing your subconscious decisions is a great way to go about a game like this - but none of the actual choices you get were interesting. you have some Bethesda-tier dialogue choices and the same few mundane tasks stretched thin without much substance. its high points are its occasional mini-games, which are pretty cute but feel pretty rough. none of its characters make an impression in the time they're given, they all feel very stock with no juice to any of em. flashbacks with the Doctor in particular got grating, even in the hour the game lasts she speaks only in lame 'friendship/robot/humanity' poignancy doping and vague world-building for a world that just doesn't have any juice to it. i wanted to be endeared but it had no juice!!!!! juiceless game with one stinky walk cycle.

one might say that Akira Yamaoka is the Snoop Dogg of video game music, showing up in shit way below his pedigree as long as he gets paid. his own personal Corey Feldman feature is his work for Stray Souls. Stray Souls is a UE 5 asset flip made by an ex-Bloober uber-racist with no real ideas or vision beyond being sorta like other games you know and FINALLY giving Silent Hill a Dark Souls dodge roll. don't worry: it has lots of AI generated slop in it too! it's got that Slender fangame pacing and design, a nauseating camera, what could be defined as animation, and a 'the cake is a lie' reference in this video game released in late 2023. tbh, if it weren't for the devs being transphobic art thieves i'd support it for being a lil funny but there's no heart behind this slop. cutscenes goofy tho!!! worth watching but not playing.

simply put: i'm just a gal who loves 2 adventure. i love discovering little secrets 'n mysteries, i love collecting weapons 'n items, and i love battling ghouls 'n creatures. LUNACID, more than most other games, does all of those things very well. me and my wife, who usually isn't super into many games, both played this for twelve hours in a single day and for most of a week were constantly talking to each other about secrets we found or things we did in-game. it's very much a game i'd recommend to play alongside friends, if possible - but also one i'd say is worth playing blind and with its difficulty slider pumped up a bit. has some larger issues with balancing and some messy area design (like the one lategame area that's JUST the Tower of Latria, it's shameless) but the level of player freedom with its wacky arsenal and abilities is just too fun. great music, too.

as sincerely invested in being a horror story as a Jeff the Killer fanfic. does for incest what Changed did for latex furry TF pornography, isn't much beyond that though dudes will swear otherwise. its focus is purely on its incestuous siblings and their sick 'n twisted toxic dynamic - which it thinks is hot. i'm not offended by incest porn but idk why you'd pretend this isn't that. you will witness legions of valorant eboys and egirls with personalities as appealing as their amazon basics LED bedroom lights adopt matching PFPs of it with a FOTM fervour like the many Chainsaw Man (Power i'm so sorry) characters before them. seventeen year old and thirty-two year old fandom-type gay people will probably doxx each other over it. it will be seen as 'reddit' within six months and forgotten shortly after.