zortch is magnificently simple. satisfyingly tuned guns and movement paired with engaging labyrinthine levels engrossed by N64 visuals are such a treat. it's all so wonderful. the dev put in so much joy into zortch and playing it is an exercise in evoking it. admittedly it's not very hard, or at least on 'warrior' difficulty, as the game buries you in ammo and health pickups. but the exploration and combat encounters are just so fun. kicking enemies to knock them off their feet, lobbing dynamite to gib a whole mob, crawling through vents to uncover secrets, it's a kitbash of turok violence, quake anxiety, and half-life investigation. it's unfathomably underpriced for $5. zortch is undervalued for how good it is despite its short playtime.

a cool slaughter-to-the-beat fps that's all about style. i havent played many rhythm games, but hellsinger nudged me into looking at them some more. except osu!, im not that big of a loser. hellsinger's got combos to build up a fury stack, so this game's equivalent of a combo meter like DMC or Ultrakill's style bar, but it actually benefits you to score as high as you can. you get little buffs between hit streaks like explosive attacks for example, but it's really the music that keeps you going for higher scores. each attack on a beat deals the highest damage that an attack can dish out while also giving you more fury to your fury meter. so not only do you want to be as stylish as you can because thats the fun way to play, it's also the best way to play if you want to stay alive and kill enemies. great combat, although the movement is a bit too slow for my tastes, and great music (serj tankian provided vocals for the final boss fight!!). hellsinger's a good way to spend a weekend because of it's 4 hour run time but it doesnt overstay its welcome. i enjoyed my time with the game and was satisfied when it ended. i dont think i'll go back to beat my scores, i'll just reminisce on the game if i ever think about rhythm shooters.

honest to god i think i enjoyed this a lot more than i thought i would. in an odd way, it made me feel like a kid again. like if i was playing a video game for the first time. everything was so cryptic and archaic that it felt almost alien. but the world and a decent amount of the level design kept me engaged to explore until the end. the real downsides to kings field are the terrible framerate, how some rooms are just one texture, the combat is obtuse and janky, and some paths to progress are hidden behind hidden walls which makes me wonder how some people can play without a guide. i was able to make it to floor 3 without a guide but towards the end of the third floor i just really needed an annotated map to show me where to find something I may need. overall janky and clunky but also atmospheric and oddly captivating to an extent.

a blindingly fast thrill ride that got better as it went on. nonstop action, obliterating weapons, a power fantasy akin to doom eternal with combo-swapping and speeding around the arena. most of what i initially said when the game was in early access still stands, but the enemies feel better to fight. the biggest issue with this game is excess. more often than not 30+ min levels, an arsenal bigger than it should be, and a gigantic enemy roster with just as much superfluity as the weapons. its overwhelming at times in that you have to fight battle after battle against countless hordes of enemies. in one of the end-game levels, there were like 900 enemies to kill! the combat is buttery smooth, but there can still be too much of a good thing. im not trying to contract carpal tunnel. there are also weapons that fill out similar roles to each other which leads to some guns not having as concise of a role in the sandbox as they should. i mostly think of the minigun vs dual uzis in this instance. i cant tell the difference between them besides one shoots faster and the other may be worse at longer ranges? why not just make the uzi the automatic hitscan weapon and just keep the minigun as a flamethrower? theres more like the microwave beam just kinda not being that useful or the accurate alt fire of the uzi kinda just being better than the normal uzi or- yea the weapons could've been tweaked a bit. theyre all good fun to use, but it's more than what's needed or even used. the augments are similar, i got all of them and didnt even use half of them i think. some augments are just clearly better choices like the chainsaw slide kills giving health and armor, extremely necessary on high difficulties since only enemies drop health on some of those difficulties.

overall though the game's pretty great, chainsaw sliding through groups of flesh and steel is beyond fun. a good boom shoot, couldve been amazing but it seriously is hard to go wrong with a breakneck FPS that has a protagonist with chainsaws for limbs.

not a bad game but holy hell did it make me sad in how unfaithful it is to the original. the carlos sections were good imo and some changeups were nice to streamline some areas. though most of the simplification to the level design hurt the game more than it did to improve it. it's incredibly linear and has less exploration than the original games and re2make. there are a lot of cutscenes in this one, and some of them take away from the spectacle by not having the player do the cool shit instead of the cinematic. Jill is incredible though. she is full of character and does a really good job at making Leon and Chris have a run for their money. the entire cast of characters is great with their one-liners and corny-80s-action-movie archetypes. i'd complain about the absurdly emphasized russian accents for Mikhail and Nicolai but they're the single-dimensional characters you'd expect with the former being a selfless leader oldhead and the latter being a comically evil selfish bastard. if this was as fully fleshed out as re2make and kept up with the great additions/changes like carlos's sections, then i think re3make would've been amazing. if anything, the over-the-top action in this game excited me for re4make. i'd recommend playing the original over this any time of the day, but if you're a resident evil fan: this would be a fun romp of action for whenever the game goes on sale.

you gib a fucking dragon and travel across time, but sometimes trip into the snore zone. a hit or miss expansion for quake. half of the levels are good labyrinthian crawls where you fight tooth and nail, but the other half are sloppily jumbled rooms with boring visuals and seemingly half-assedly designed. episode 2 was my favorite because of the beautiful new textures. god, curse of osiris is a charming but also great looking level with the statues and art. the murals for each zone are also really nice. the new weapons are alright, the best one being the multi-rocket rocket launcher (for obvious reasons) and the new nail guns are pretty much just nail guns that do more damage. the new enemies are neat, nothing to write home about though. really only for the quakeheads that want more official quake content, otherwise, just play arcane dimensions or something. speaking of which, i should go download that.

honest to god one of the most beautiful cyberpunk cityscapes ever. carlos lizarraga's level design and 3D modeling are so gorgeously bleak, i want a more fleshed out game or RPG, ANYTHING with this mamoru oshii level of detail. more cyberpunk games need the blue-gray gloom of ghost in the shell or patlabor 2 rather than vaporwave exuberance. the visuals and banging soundtrack were the biggest reasons for me to complete the game, but the gameplay was still pretty commendable. the beginning of the game is slow, boringly slow. you have dual revolvers and smgs, killing enemies that make DOOM riflemen look like einstein. but once you get the shotgun, the game begins to elevate. the extra movement from the shotgun blast, gaining extra height or boosting yourself backwards, makes the arena fights so much more engaging. it's another weapon-swap doom eternal retro fps, but its movement is restrained. there are no jump pads, monkey bars, dashing, or even bhopping. you have to slide and wallrun to dodge hellfire. it's the constant movement and arena encounters where you'll find the retro part of the game, the movement itself is unique to itself. gamers will see a wall run and call it titanfall. sprawl's wall run isn't infinite. you lose height over time and can only jump off a wall two times. combine that with the somewhat pitiful slide that cant be abused for movement, and youve got a game that plays like a trudge through mud when compared to the impossible speeds of titanfall 2 making the comparison unfair since theyre wholly different experiences. oddly enough, as the game expanded with its arsenal and enemy roster, the game got better (although the bossfights are a bit lackluster, not terrible just a bit eh). i say this is odd because FPSs tend to fall off in the end third or quarter of their playtime, but this game is so concise in what it aims to do that it has no bloat and doesnt lose steam. the limited movement and heavy weaponry come together to make decent to amazingly satisfying combat when the arena allows for fluidity. there are moments of bland, too-open arena fights or claustrophobic halls that can be too frustrating depending on the enemy, but the feeling of struggling to stay above enemies to headshot them in slow-mo while weapon swapping is phenomenal.

somehow the combat is both frantic and methodical. slowly paced with constrained movement and max payne bullet time while having hordes of enemies and bullets to dodge. but those instances of bliss with the gunfights are only occasional, momentarily beautiful violence. more often than not, the enemies are too simple to keep the gameplay loop interesting where so many enemies are the same thing but with variations in their health pool. the potential was impeccable, but the delivery was competent.

trying to actually start playing this and its absurd how fucking huge the world is. like its jaw-droppingly massive. OPPRESSIVELY maximalist. its also as batshit insane as i remember. aside from the translation, the game is conceptually bizarre. what do you mean im not my 40k cosplaying boss's killer if i killed him?

the game immediately lets you have access to an anti-material rifle so im out on streets blowing up parked cars by accident when im trying to just dome some bandit. in the first real level after the tutorial i killed: white looters with afros, fed bootlickers, two demons, some eldritch being robot?, and apparently a "little-grey" alien.

i feel that i may love this game more than i already do, its just got pretty much everything i like in media.

one more thing: you can host 32-player servers of this game.

atrociously late 2000's and bog-standard AAA open world clashing with its charmingly detailed dilapidation and nearly cathartic movement. finally getting around to infamous makes me feel like im a middle schooler again with the elementary angst of its protagonist and the rudimentary story propped up by exposition. playing it through PSnow, and it's surprisingly better than i expected. i dont know how much lag is from PS3 hardware or streaming, but the input delay is nigh existent, so i dont really care. seeing empire city for the first time raised my hopes with this game. all the abundant trash, abused cars, and populated streets genuinely excited me for what was to come.

the gameplay lead me on. traversing buildings was great, the game promoted exploration and didnt seem like it facilitated vehicles or fast travel (yet at least). the combat was explosive and chaotic, some of my favorite features in action games as it's a thrill. but then the cracks quickly begin to form and form, but im not so sure how deep they burrow into the game. the combat is weirdly both a combo action game AND a cover shooter. the cover mechanics arent very well done and this overall causes more frustration with how these opposing philosophies fight against each other. you have ranged attacks, grenades, and even a precision shot, but your melee attacks hit like trucks, you can lift enemies up into the air for easier comboing, and the game lets you slam hard into the ground to enter fights. but how squishy cole is fights against the aggressive nature of some of the abilities you have. half the time youre behind cover, the other half youre in the fray and frantically using all your attacks while searching for electricity to heal yourself with. it seems not very focused on what it wanted to be. the way enemies spawn HIGH above the ground on far rooftops, shooting you with pretty good accuracy, seems to promote the cover shooting side of the game, but the weak cover system and aggressive abilities go against that. it's weird and, at times, even frustrating.

then comes our good ol friend AAA open-world game design. heaps of side missions, ceaseless amounts of collectibles, a map to wipe enemies off of, it's very similar to ubisoft's overused formula born from far cry 3. this wouldn't be as big of a deal if the movement was any better. scaling buildings and jumping across rooftops is annoying at times but is at best very cathartic. when youre smoothly climbing walls or jumping to drainage pipes or trying to grab onto a far ledge, it feels great until the game awkwardly has a hard time moving cole where youre leading him. or worse: not understanding what youre trying to jump on to.

infamous is very run-of-the-mill with some great set dressing and particle effects. the gameplay reaches close to greatness but lands on its butt in the no man's land of some good ideas but also some bad execution. the story is nothing to write home about but that's not a dealbreaker. like, cmon man, im playing a game about an edgy electric superhero dude from 2009. i just reached the warren and got the glide ability, so i think i'll play more but for how much longer, im not sure. like it's combat, im phasing in between whether i want to drop this or see it out to the end.

23.07.2023: god this game is such a fucking slog thats already severely hampered by poorly aged open world game design and combat built upon two conflicting ideas. dont know why i finished this, but i at least i played bloodborne for a bit to cleanse my mind.

so grossly uninspired and disappointingly a waste of talent. the art style, enemy designs, and music (for the most part) sit atop a mound of rotting garbage bags housed in a dumpster painted to look like fallout 4 and bioshock infinite. i shit you not, theres a part in the game where youre in an elevator, and outside its glass, you see an underwater facility to which the protag makes a bioshock reference by saying, "this is some kinda rapture!" plus the music sounds so similar to the bioshock rapture reveal lol. incessantly grabbing onto every bit of incomprehensibly mundane litter to craft upgrades is mind-numbing which then gets exacerbated by its lifeless open world. exploration is something you want to avoid. empty rooms, ongoing hordes of enemies, pathetic traversal, major hallmarks of terrible open world design. halfway through the game, i didnt know you could drive cars and that joyful discovery was immediately soured by enemy corpses bringing my car to an instant trudge. the loot doesnt even justify the poor exploration. i did some of the "polygon" facility dungeon things and decided i didnt want to waste my time anymore with them after the third or fourth one. even though these dungeons, and the majority of story missions, have the best level design to offer in atomic heart, they are still just so boring. especially with a story so sporadic, so schizophrenic, there is almost nothing to get invested in. it's supposed to be this sorta story where the protagonist is being gaslighted by everybody he meets. it's supposed to make the player think about their mysterious origin and who may actually be the villain. in reality i just had no fucking idea what was going on. not sure if it was just a misfortunately poorly translated english script, but so much shit felt redundant, out of left field, or the equivalent of water going up your nose. combat is almost okay. melee is suprisingly alright, gunplay is nice, enemies are annoying as fuck though. especially that red nerve monster guy, pusschy or whatever. the enemies just jump all over the place and knock you down sometimes. manageable in small numbers, annoying when theres like 4 of them and then you get stuck on a prop or geometry.

just such a fucking sad experience more than anything. i honestly wished this was a fake video game instead of actually being playable. i think the one moment that mightve broken me the most was when the song "The Alien" from the soundtrack of Annihilation (2018) began playing in a 'pivotal' moment, and chickens began spawning around me. ironically, the positive with this game is that it's so bad that it's helping me love video games again because i dont want anybody to ever make something like this again.

this is basically just a lost doom game that somebody found and released with some modernization and a light coat of paint. if doom 3 or doom 64 didnt please you, this can be your head canon doom 3. its strengths are the visuals and level design. the enemies all stand out from one another and the sprite-ification of their models looks really good. the blood is also some of the best blood in a video game. walls will be painted red, new seas of blood will cover the facilities you traverse. combat is pretty standard, it's what to expect from a boomer shooter but its done pretty well to be fun with the vast arsenal of satisfying weapons. overall a good boom shoot, though im not entirely sure if i'd call this a must-play for the genre.