I'm calling it now, Binary Domain is the best shooter I've played, period. Whether that speaks volume to my own personal tastes, or the game itself is up to you to decide, but I'll try my best to explain. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios added something really special to this game, from the writing being both corny and endearing, to the slower non-shooting segments of the game where you walk down some pretty densely detailed environments filled with NPC's to listen to and teammate conversations to participate in. There's a lot in this that reminds me of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIII right down to the neofuturistic world design, font choice for subtitles, menu ui, and the upgrade stations being little shopping kiosks sprinkled throughout the linear level designs. While the story wasn't all that original, it really leans into the tropes of the genre with complete sincerity. This is all carried by the characters. It really struck me during the opening mission that Dan and Bo have such a natural way of speaking to each other. Dan himself is just very charismatic which is such a breath of fresh air for one of these military man type-main characters. I think Charlie and Rachel were the only 2 characters I didn't care too much for only, especially come the last couple chapters where everything gets a lot more serious and predictable in-fighting starts happening.

Speaking of talking, this game has voice commands that work some of the time. There's a huge plethora of voice lines that you can shout out mid-combat to varying degrees of success and functionality. While I did ultimately turn it off part-way through, it did provide a lot of entertainment when screensharing the game with friends. It's completely unnecessary since turning them off still allows you to communicate with your teammates with the 4 most vital combat commands, showing just how irrelevant pretty much all of the others are.

Something about the combat that felt really good was the almost Resident Evil 4-like interaction you can have with enemies. Shooting different parts of them can lead to different interactions, like if you take out their legs they'll start crawling toward you, taking our their arms makes them run up to you to melee instead of shoot, and popping their heads makes them turn into a very temporary ally. By the end I was pretty much always aiming for headshots, but it was nice knowing if someone or a group was too far away I could spray and pray my way through most combat scenarios.

The bosses were pretty much all great too, I loved their designs especially the huge ones. They really make you use your primary gun's blast attack since it provides a temporary stunned state to the boss, most of which have very aggressive melee attacks that can knock you down in one to two hits so getting those stuns as windows to move away or have your squad riddle it with bullets is essential.

The only things I didn't really like were the Mad Max / Gears of War outfits that you have on the entire game. They are just a bit too generic looking for my liking, especially after the really cool sci-fi scubagear wet suits Dan and Bo had on in the first chapter. Also like I mentioned earlier, a lot of the charm in the writing is lost toward the end of the game.

I liked this one a lot. I might even say that I loved it.

Mega Man X3 is in a lot of ways better than X2, but in other ways, not as good.
For starters, I found the process of 100% completing X3 less frustrating than X2, and the stages themselves were longer and felt more complete than X2's.

Problem is, the soundtrack relied a lot on a very specific guitar-like instrument, and it made the OST stale and not as memorable as previously. Even if there are some good themes here and there.

Bit and Byte, the new baddies that accompany Dr. Doppler, were also not as interesting as the X-Hunters, and while it's cool that Vile is back and has a very unique boss fight... after he's gone... yeah, he barely meant much.

The final boss, I also found to be more annoying than previously, especially with having to climb up to avoid the lava, otherwise you're pretty much dead and have to fight him all over again.

Overall, while Mega Man X3 does a lot better than X2, it also comes with its own problems that made this one inferior to its previous entries.

Palworld really surprised me, I remember people were posting the trailers on twitter saying how ridiculous the concept was a few weeks before it launched. And after playing it I was really impressed how decently fun and polished this game was

One big gripe I have with it is playing on controller almost seems to break the game, I have no problem moving around with keyboard and mouse but controller causes all sorts of problems

The game is pretty easy to pick up and the progression feels satisfying, I will admit I never liked these types of crafting base building survival games, but I enjoyed this one a bit.

The characters are pretty cute and its cool to be able to use them to build up your base, gather supplies, farm, etc.

Its a lot more than Pokemon with guns

Honestly its just great to see a big company like nintendo, who's been so cocky releasing bad pokemon games start getting a little worried that they have competent competition

Ark + Pokemon equals a whole lot of fun. For an early access game, priced at half the cost of a regular game, to have this much content is insane. It's the kind of game I've always wanted. It fixes some issues that both Ark and Pokemon had and somehow creates something unique and fresh. I might be biased since I love these types of games, but this is truly one of the better ones. It is in early access and it does have plenty of bugs but nothing as bad as Ark, to be honest. I'm excited about what this game will look like down the line once it's fully released

In American college applications, the theme of “ethnic food”, and the bonds that form between generations when cooking said “ethnic food”, is considered one of the most stereotypical college admissions essays around, overused to the point where it lost all meaning both in the eyes of students and admissions officers.

This was something that I was unfamiliar with before I started applying to US colleges. Growing up in a country with shockingly little diversity and where everyone drew inspiration from the same cultural cookbook (Japan), the concept of ethnic food was foreign and intriguing. As a result, when applying to colleges myself, I specifically explained in my essays about my country’s cuisine and how it connected with me and connected me to the bonds that demarcated my life.

So why am I talking about the overusage of writing about ethnic food in American college applications? Because Venba represents the culmination and the zenith of ethnic food writing, in any medium, for any purpose. It’s a devastating glimpse into the precipice of cultural collision, identity, and the balance between assimilation and submission. And it does this with a deft hand of literary seasoning, a fleur-de-sel of stylistic prose that never overpowers the clarity of the original vision. The food gameplay itself is charming, engaging and fun: an appetizer to the main course, some acidity to cleanse the palate and that cuts through the richness of the writing one digests.

(Review in progress, come back later for the full review! Just saving this review for now :>)