almost impossible to recommend but easily one of my fav fighting games. small cast of characters but they all feel super idealized and fleshed out, they're all really fun and the combat is sick. love the meter mechanics. it isn't all out yet but the story mode is cute as hell and surprisingly ambitious with dungeons, towns, platforming-esque challenges and boss fights + fun writing. the music whoops ass and the art style, while obviously not everyone's thing, is really well executed. the designs are adorable and they animate pretty well. it sucks that people pass up on it because they're fucking cowards and can't handle it but that's whatever ig

baby's first apocalypse narrative matched with the worst gameplay elements of the Uncharted series. the last of us released at the peak of gaming media's obsession with finding validity as not just a medium for adults to enjoy, but one on par with cinema and literature. for whatever reason, this game was heralded as gaming's 'Citizen Kane' for a while. it's a third person shooter with zombies and it's one of the many pieces of media that spawned from a boring dude who saw Children of Men and decided he could also do that. everyone's angry and tense all of the time and there's lots of violence, which is how you know it's for adults (serious). but there's a dad and a daughter, so it's sorta heartwarming af tho. nothing about the game part of the game is very fun to play in a conventional sense - large parts consist of just walkin' around while you listen to dialogue. maybe you move a ladder. maybe you collect materials and craft a knife. maybe you crouch walk around enemies and press triangle to view the killing cutscene. i love games that aren't conventionally "fun", but the last of us makes no statement with its mechanics and design. more than anything, it feels like a game that is embarrassed to be a game and decides to entirely ignore any of the medium''s advantages and possibilities in favour of being completely conventional. and like, obviously there's a place for conventional stories but i just don't find this particular one interesting - especially as a game. naughty dog's uncharted series at least face the player with spectacle and dozens of enemies but tlou doesn't evolve much over its runtime, aside from having more guys. it's a culmination of the 7th gen's most boring elements distilled in one package that might as well just be the TV show it became.

this is also a game that was so successful it set the standards for what most big narrative driven triple a releases would be for the next couple generations. very much not a fan of that and the impact it had on the industry as a whole - it's the final turning point for PlayStation going from a system with a diverse library of colourful games to mostly just games like this. wide appeal titles very-normal narratives that are just like some other thing tonally and narratively but slopped up into a game that plays like a million other games. boring!!!! it's just boring.

this game still kicks ass supreme but it's weird revisiting and getting to domestic abuser Cid. you go from Barret being betrayed and losing an arm and Cloud's identity crisis, serious stakes in the world of the story but tonally light as a player, to Cid abusing the shit out of a woman for decades because she saved his life and she's so broken from him that she thinks she deserves it. fuck this guy get him AWAY from her!!!!! it's just a bit jarring, tonally, going from this morally-dark abuser party member to ex-wifeguy vampire Vincent, Sephiroth's goth step-dad.