Played for a few hours before I decided to stop and sell my copy because the game looks like shit and runs like shit. "Bad graphics" aren't inherently a problem but in cases like this where you can see what the game is trying to be and how short it's falling it's really rough. And, of course, it feels awful because of horrible optimization.

And for what? A pokemon game that's nominally open-world and is otherwise the same exact thing again? The biggest problem with pokemon games (other than their complete lack of polish) at this point is their refusal to allow the player to engage with any of the mechanics they designed which are pretty much all multiplayer-only. AI trainers don't even switch pokemon. A battle where no one switches is just test of whether you remember the type chart. Piss-poor AI results in a massive number of moves, abilities and entire pokemon being essentially pointless as there's never reason to do anything other than swing with super-effective attacks every turn of every fight. I'd love a hard difficulty, but that's not really the problem- where's the fun of exploring a new region full of new pokemon if a new pokemon is, in gameplay terms, the same thing as any other?

The Worst Video Game Ever Made. Not exactly for the reasons people who've never played it would tell you. In reality, league can't decide if it's a team game or a solo game, containing mechanics that are extremely frustrating for solo players but then all but forcing solo play (in that it's the only way you can play with functional matchmaking, ranked flex is not real) without even having basic communication functions like voice chat. Because the game is unfun and frustrating the players all take out their frustration on each other and delude themselves into thinking the problem is their bad teammates rather than game design that produces arbitrary outcomes for individual players (even if it's fairer on a macro level) but provides no legitimate ranked mode to play as anything but an individual player. Also it's all pretty bland.

Overwatch was never good. Trying to have Something for Everyone leads to nothing that actually stands out for anyone (i.e. the edgelord character can't even swear). Hero kits are pretty bland taken in the abstract, much worse when compared to other games. Multiple heroes are basically lifted from TF2, but OW's take on "rocket-launcher using character with high aerial mobility" took TF2's rocket jumping (inherently fun, dynamic, skillful yet accessible, chaotic, varied) and turned it into "press shift to fly upwards a set distance" (bland). Compare what it's like to play Engineer in TF2 and Torbjorn in OW (and if they didn't want us to make that comparison they shouldn't have taken so heavily from TF2). Worse yet, the game was never balanced and role queue had to be implemented so people wouldn't all pick the same boring team comps. Heroes have linear, single-purpose kits and are therefore easily counterpicked, meaning playing what you actually want to play is rarely optimal at higher levels. Art direction is boring. At least it's fun to play as wrecking ball.

One day I'll sit down and write out everything I hate about this game. It'll be a really long review. This game is putrid.

So poorly designed and poorly written and poorly acted on so many levels that it is, at least, occasionally pretty funny. It's bizarre to think the opening sequence of Kingdom Hearts 2 is in the same series as this game. The combat is bland and uninspired, the story is bland is uninspired except for when it's hammy enough to be kind of funny... but there are some just outright baffling decisions here. Easily the worst boss design I've ever seen in a video game, period. They're not hard, really, but they have all kinds of weird invincibility and can barely be hitstunned so you end up feeling like you're cheesing your way through every fight even though you're not being challenged (or if you're on a high difficulty you are being challenged, but in a really stupid way). The Disney stuff is orders of magnitude more boring here than in other KH games and that was not a high bar to begin with. I played through all 3 characters' stories without ever once unlocking anything that makes their normal attacks anything other than a stiff 3-hit combo because the ways you actually unlock that are... painfully stupid time-wasters that pretty much require a guide. Who cares? It's still not gonna be fun.

Quite fun at times but ultimately lesser than the sum of its parts. The one pure horror game bit is the standout. Above all else, it suffers from trying to go a bit more action-gamey but still having Ethan move fairly slowly through what are mostly cramped linear pathways. It's still a fun game with some good ideas, but it seems too excited to switch it up in ways that wind up feeling mediocre rather than just coming up with solid recontextualizations of the base gameplay. So many potentially good things here feel underused.. the enemies that actually climb around and use the environment are extremely fun to fight, but you'll spend just as much time fighting the extremely stupid and comically easy robot guys with the big glowing weak points.

(Played the N.Sane Trilogy Remaster)

Really just bad. Can't think of much to say that's positive. Remarkably poor level deign. Not even especially functional on a fundamental level- 99% of the difficulty is just not being able to tell where you're positioned. The variable camera angles across levels is the coolest part of the game in theory, but in practice it means there's absolute garbage in there like the 2d levels- as cute as it is to confine your 3d platformer character to a 2d space, the end result is just a 2d platformer that plays like complete shit.

Many smart people think Spec Ops: The Line is a stupid fake-deep game, and viewed without its cultural context that's really all it is. What makes the game reasonably cool is that it was originally essentially a trap- masquerading as a generic modern military shooter, as far as I can tell its intention was to make people that love call of duty actually think a little bit about call of duty. It does a good job of that at times, but if you've already thought about call of duty you're not really the target audience, and anyone that plays the game today probably isn't the target audience.